Relapse
by lilylovelessequalswin
Summary: Naomi suffers a relapse, and this time, she might not come out of it alive. Set post Series 3.
1. Realising

Authors Note: Hello all! This is my first Skins fic; that said, I still want your honest opinion on my writing, 'cause constructive crtitcism ftw :) I warn you now, updates may take a while, as I'm currently doing exams (though they're nearly over now, thank God) and I'm still trying to figure out this site. I am determined to finish this though, so if you want me to continue, just drop a review to let me know what you think. Thanks :)

Disclaimer: Skins isn't mine, no copyright infringement intended.

Emily finds it first.

They are in Naomi's room, in her bed—Emily's naked, the way Naomi likes her best—and kissing fiercely to swallow the sounds Emily is making, little moans and sighs that increase in volume and pace the harder Naomi sucks on her neck, the faster she presses her fingers into Emily's cunt. Her skin is burning; Naomi's fingers curl upwards and rub, hard, her tongue rough against Emily's as she comes. They break apart, and Naomi makes sure Emily's watching as she slowly sucks her fingers clean, smirking at the way her breath hitches and the strangled sound that escapes her throat.

"Fucking hell, Nae," she exhales shakily, laughing softly. "You're killing me."

Naomi just grins at her, falling onto her back beside the beautiful redhead, pulling her in close, stroking the skin of her stomach. "It's not my fault you're such a horny teenage boy. I mean, God, show some restraint, Em."

Emily just laughs, pushes at her shoulder. "Maybe I could, if you weren't so inherently sexy at _everything_," she says, looking up into Naomi's eyes and smiling. "Y'know, for someone infamous for their sexuality complex, you sure seem to enjoy sex with girls."

Naomi's grin grows, and she casts a fond look at Emily. "Just the one girl, Em."

Emily kisses her then, traces her lips with her hot tongue until they part and she slips inside, exploring. It's slow, at first; quickly turns fast and passionate when Emily snakes a hand up Naomi's shirt, under her bra, and soon her fingers are skating over Naomi's nipple at the same pace her tongue brushes Naomi's own. Naomi moans, arching into the touch, and Emily rolls on top of her more fully, pulling away from her lips to rid her of her shirt and bra, crashing their bodies together soon afterwards.

"Fuck," Naomi gasps, breathing heavily as Emily sucks on her tits, pushing her skirt off with her hands, trailing them back up Naomi's thighs slowly, stopping just short of her cunt. "Please, Em."

Heated brown eyes lock on desire-filled blue, and Emily smirks, presses a soft kiss to the blonde's lips before licking and nipping her way down Naomi's body, over her breasts, pausing at her stomach to feel it tense, muscles flexing, everytime she so much as breathes on Naomi's skin.

Pauses for an entirely different reason when she casts her eyes downward.

"What the fuck?" Emily frowns, ceases her ministrations, causing Naomi to groan in frustration. "Emily, please, I need you so fucking much right now—"

"Naomi," Emily says, quietly, worried. "What did you do?"

Confused by the redhead's actions, and concerned at her tone of voice, Naomi props herself up on her elbows, glancing down at Emily; she's hovering over her abdomen, brow creased with worry, nimble fingers splayed across her skin. "What are you—"

She stops. Notices what has captured Emily's attention; her girlfriend's hands are flat across her stomach, index fingers and thumbs touching, framing a patch of her skin.

Skin that is stained.

A dark, ugly purple bruise spreads downwards from under her bellybutton, creeping outwards from beneath Emily's hands, large and threatening. Naomi is shocked; she stares hard at the imperfection, tries to remember banging into something, or Emily biting hard enough to do that much damage. Draws a blank.

Tearing her eyes away from her body, she meets Emily's; her insides twist into knots at the perplexity and anguish she sees staring back at her. She clears her throat, remembers Emily's question. "I don't—fuck, Em, I have no idea."

Emily's frown deepens, and she sits up, prompting Naomi to do the same, until they're facing each other; Naomi catches the moment when Emily shifts her eyes, her cheeks reddening, and she knows her girlfriend well enough by now to know that she's going to ask something she doesn't know how Naomi will react to. She crawls closer to Emily on the bed, clasps her hands, smiles softly, is granted a nervous curl of the lips in return.

Swallowing, Emily tries, "You're not—I mean, has anyone…" Emily takes a deep breath, fixes Naomi with a look so scared that Naomi _aches,_ and says, in one long breath, "Has someone been hurting you?"

Naomi's eyes widen, and Emily's eyes drop to the mattress and clench shut, anticipating Naomi biting her head off. She considers it, for a moment; _someone _could only really be one of two people, and the fact Emily thinks her mum or Kieran are capable of something so godamned awful makes Naomi fucking furious; annoying as fuck they may be, but they're not fucking child beaters, and Naomi opens her mouth to tell Emily as much, anger creeping up her throat—she stops when she realises Emily's eyes are still screwed shut, and she's shaking slightly; she remembers Emily's reluctance to ask her in the first place, wary of her reaction; it dawns on her suddenly that Emily expected her to yell, but she asked anyway, had to make sure Naomi was okay; she loves her that fucking much.

It makes her heart hurt, sometimes, how much Emily cares.

Anger draining, Naomi lifts her hand to Emily's cheek, smoothing out the creases in her skin with her fingertips until Emily finally opens her eyes, looking apologetic, yet not retracting the question (Naomi loves her all the more for it). Naomi sighs, tries a smile. "Of course not, Em. Don't be fucking ridiculous."

Emily visibly relaxes at the reply, looking so relieved her suspicions were wrong –and that Naomi didn't explode at her—that the blonde can't help but kiss her, repeatedly, fleeting little french kisses that warm her from the inside out. Emily's holding back, though—Naomi's learned to tell with these things—and Naomi gently grips her face with both hands, eager to stop Emily worrying. "Don't worry about it, Ems. I probably got it from that protest I was at last week, when the police got involved," she says, reassuringly. "Fucking pricks," she adds, with an eye roll and a smirk, for good measure.

It works. Emily laughs at her, pokes her in the ribs. "Be more careful next time, yeah?" She grins devilishly. "Cause I'm only really in this because of your hot body, and if you start getting beat up by policeman or angry Republicans, I might not be so inclined to shag you as much—"

_Cunt_, Naomi thinks, as she shuts her up with a kiss.

Emily finds it first; it's Naomi who finds the others.

It's much, much later, when the sky is bruised with pinks and purples and Emily has gone home—("Mum's less likely to be an insufferable cunt if I go home and eat some fucking soup every so often")—that Naomi decides she should really get up at some point, because there's college tomorrow after all, and she has some Politics coursework to finish and she hates disappointing Kieran, who practically lives with her now and it would be near impossible to ignore his fucking glaring or whatever. Sighing, Naomi tosses off her duvet, the smell of Emily and sex hanging in the air, making her smile, and wanders over to her dresser, with the intention of finally putting some clothes on.

She freezes on the spot when she catches sight of herself in the mirror.

Her back is _covered _in bruises; a dozen black smears painted on her skin, an ugly path trailing from her left shoulder blade down to the base of her spine, like fat ink blots on white paper.

_Fuck, _Naomi thinks. _Fuck._


	2. Remembering

**Author's Note:** Thank you so much for all your reviews guys, I really appreciate them :) I don't know how to reply to them (this site is too complicated for my tiny brain to handle) but every single one made me smile. This is a bit of a filler chapter, but it'll get interesting real soon, I promise, so please stick with it. Sorry for any mistakes, I have no spell-checker on my laptop. Enjoy :)

There are seventeen bruises by the time Naomi wakes up on Monday—gets up, really; her night was restless—and she counts them slowly, with shaky hands and an unsteady heartbeat. Her back is facing the mirror, head twisted round to study the marks; two more have bloomed on the back of her neck, small circles close together, barely touching. The inside of her left arm too, is decorated, the skin near her wrist severely discoloured and very, very tender; Naomi hisses as she prods at the marks, tries to scrub them away. She watches silently as the pressure turns them white, disappearing, before they inevitably darken and scar her once more. _Permanent._

Naomi wonders how she hadn't noticed them before, is desperate to know how long she's been like this—damaged—but she's thinking hard and coming up with nothing. She reasons with herself it can't have been too long, or else she would have seen them, or Emily would have; ignores the little voice inside her head that says she doesn't pay much attention to her back, that her and Emily make love when it's dark in her room and they're too wrapped up in each other to notice things like that. Ignores it, because otherwise she fears she'll lose her mind.

Naomi keeps staring, but her reflection doesn't change like she wishes it would. She faces the mirror fully, wearing only her underwear, and gently touches the ruined skin of her stomach, the way Emily had done the day before, when all this started. She swears its grown bigger, blacker, imagines it slowly stretching outwards over the rest of her skin, and _infecting._ Naomi keeps staring, but her reflection doesn't change.

It screams danger.

Naomi waits for Katie and Emily sitting on the wall at the end of their driveway—she'd rather marry Nick Griffin than deal with Jenna Fitch today—and she hates the way that the thought of smoking a cigarette to pass the time sends a chill through her body, makes her stomach clench and her mind race with words like _carcinogen._ She's staring at the warnings on her cigarette packet—smoking _kills_—and her eyes blur for a second; she curses loudly before crushing the pack in her palm and tossing it in the Fitch's dustbin. _Fuck, fuck, FUCK—_

"Naomi?"

She starts, flicks her eyes upwards, blinking rapidly, to see Emily and Katie wandering towards her, the former looking concerned, the latter giving her a what-the-fuck look. _Shit, _Naomi thinks, fixing a smile on her face and standing up, praying that the twins hadn't seen too much of her freak out. Emily looks ready to say something, so Naomi pulls her in close and kisses her long and deep, ignoring Katie's predictable sounds of disgust and muttered 'lezza bitch.'

"Hello to you, too," Emily breathes when they finally pull apart, slight blush colouring her cheeks at such a public display of affection in front of her sister, who is currently glaring at Naomi spectacularly. Naomi smiles and winks at Katie simultaneously, watches the now brunette's lips twitch as she supresses a grin in return.

Over the summer, Naomi had spent long afternoons in the Fitch household, when Jenna and Rob were out and James was threatened with extreme violence if he told them Naomi was around. Naomi liked it at Emily's house; it was quiet and clean and pretty and there was no Gina or Kieran to be found; there was, however, one Katie Fitch.

It had been painfully awkward the first time Naomi visited; Naomi was very tempted to tell Katie to just fuck off and leave them alone, but dreaded the hurt look that would surely grace Emily's face, and the subdued look Katie had worn—ever-present since the rock incident—had unnerved Naomi, and she found her heart twinging with sympathy. So she'd suffered through the stilted conversation and uncomfortable silences—had received some mind-blowing sex from Emily as a reward for her troubles—and next time she visited, had brought vodka and spliff. The tentative smile Katie had given her when she was presented with the narcotics had been the start of a shaky yet oddly fitting friendship between the two; Naomi found that Katie was just as if not more sarcastic and cutting than she was, sometimes, and when she wasn't trying to be a cunt, was actually pretty fucking hilarious, and she enjoyed the banter they constantly bombarded each other with, and eventually managed to get along with the brunette—a much better colour on her—completely sober.

Now Katie was pinning Naomi with a look that was half angry, half amused. "Well, if you're quite done tongue-fucking my sister in the middle of the street, Campbell, could we like, actually get to fucking college at some point today?"

Naomi laughs, throws an arm around both of the twins' shoulders. "Sure thing, Katiekins. I'd hate to give you the oppurtunity to hold me accountable for the lack of A levels you're sure to acquire when college ends, when really it's the distraction of gashead football players and constant clothes shopping that's to blame."

Emily bursts out laughing at that, and Katie shoves her arm off, giving her the finger and stalking ahead of them, leopard-print skirt blowing in the wind.

Naomi forgets her troubles for the moment, and finds she can breathe.

Things are much different from last year.

Katie is no longer falling all over herself to be Effy's best friend; Naomi isn't sure what happened between them when Effy came back from wherever she was with Cook, but she assumes they reached an understanding of sorts, that they both majorly fucked up, and they've actually become proper friends. Effy's grown up, too; has stopped fucking everyone around and decided she wants neither Freddie nor Cook, who are both still helplessly in love with her (but pretend they aren't). Cook continues to shag pretty much whoever he can, and he, Freddie and JJ have finally stopped fighting about Effy and are getting along again, which JJ is thrilled about. Naomi still can't look at him for very long, else images of him and Emily in a bed—Naomi tries not to think about it, and mostly ignores the boy. Panda and Thomas have reconciled, and are besotted with each other once more, though Thomas continues to resent Cook enormously; Naomi knows Cook is sorry, can see it in his eyes when he looks at them together, and it surprises her how much they've all grown up.

They are a haphazard heap of bodies on the field, enjoying a brief bout of October sun during the lunch hour. Naomi and Emily are leaning up against a tree, the redhead cuddled into Naomi's side; Naomi is used to this now, public displays of affection, enjoys it even, how she can kiss and touch and hold Emily whenever and wherever she likes without freaking out and hurting her feelings. Emily's skin is warm against her own, and Naomi smiles at this, stroking a hand through her girlfriend's vibrant red locks, prompting a shy smile and a tender kiss from the littlest Fitch twin.

Cook wolf-whistles at them, and they break apart, rolling their eyes, to glare at him. He smirks dirtily, says, "Don't mind me, ladies. As you were."

Naomi just smiles at him and shakes her head, squeezing Emily's hand to calm her, as she's never been too fond of Cook. Even less so, since she found out about his almost shag with HER girlfriend. "We're not here to entertain you, James."

He laughs loudly, scooching closer to them on the grass, a shit-eating grin on his face. "Not even if I ask all nice like?"

Emily frowns and tells him to fuck off, at which he laughs and moves away from them again. "A'ight Red, calm yourself. I'll just have to picture it in my head, won't I?" Cook drags his eyes sleazily across their bodies, exploding with laughter as he looks at Naomi's neck, drawing the rest of the group's attention. The couple glance at each other, bewildered. "Shouldn't be too 'ard, mind, what with all these visuals you're presenting Cookie with," he continues, nodding towards the blonde.

As everyone turns to look at her, Naomi feels her face grow hot. As they start to smirk and laugh, and Emily blushes, she demands, "What?"

Katie gives it away. "Fuck's sake, Em," she says, laughing, "hungry, were you?"

Emily's blush deepens, and Naomi glances down at her neck to see what looks like a hickey printed on her skin. She freezes.

"Shut up, Katie," admonishes her twin, burying her face in Naomi's shoulder. Everyone laughs again, and Naomi tries out a smirk despite the chill in her bones. It stretches her face all wrong, even as she makes an offhand comment about Emily's libido that earns her an elbow in the ribs from the redhead and an extremely gleeful look from Cook.

All the while, her heart rate increases as she panics, her skin prickling with heat, and there's too much air in her chest (she's suffocating). Naomi can feel it – it's not a lovebite, not the result of Emily sucking hard at her skin in a fit of passion; it feels dirty, and she has to dig her fingers into her thigh to stop herself from trying to gouge it from her body. Naomi knows that it she were to touch it, it would really fucking hurt; Naomi tries to keep laughing with the others, even as she feels a memory burning in the back of her mind…

"_Wakey wakey, Naomi," Gina called, shaking her two year old daughter out of slumber, smiling as her little girl sat up and rubbed sleep from her eyes, flyaway curls messy and tangled. "Morning, sweetheart."_

"_Mummy!" Naomi sang, jumping up and squeezing Gina's neck with chubby arms, giggling sleepily. _

_Gina hugged her tightly before turning to find some clean clothes for her daughter, as Naomi bounced away happily on her bed. Then something caught her attention._

"_Blue!" She shrieked, stabbing at a spot on her arm with a tiny finger, wincing as it hurt, and Gina spun around in shock at the loud exclamation. "Look Mummy, blue – like smurfs!" _

_Naomi watched her mum's eyes widen as she noticed the bruise that adorned her porcelain skin, saw her mouth turn downwards and her forehead crease. "Mummy?" she asked, cocking her head to one side. "You 'kay?" _

_Even as Gina nodded and kissed her arm better, praising her for getting her colours right and striking up a conversation about Papa Smurf, Naomi felt something wriggling in her belly, that feeling she sometimes got when she had a tummy bug and was sick. _

_Her mummy might be okay. But Naomi thought that maybe she wasn't._

Naomi is pulled from the memory – her earliest – by the eerie sensation of eyes boring holes in her skin, hot like little flames, and she glances upwards and meets irises that are bluer than hers, dark like ocean water and equally as intense. Effy's gaze drops to Naomi's neck before studying her face again, and lines appear between two raised eyebrows (the look brings about a sense of déja vu so powerful Naomi's stomach drops and she struggles to breathe).

There is no fooling Effy.


	3. Repressing

Naomi spends the rest of the day avoiding Effy at all costs.

Naomi knows that her friend knows something is wrong, because Effy always just fucking _knows _everything – _and it's pissing annoying_, Naomi thinks with a frown as she scowls at her ring binder, completely oblivious to anything Kieran has said so far in the lesson, but it's fine, because she's ace at politics and really has bigger things to worry about than the bloody government and its leaders.

It's not like this is new for Naomi, and it's exactly that, that tightens something in her stomach, a pain that intensifies every time she catches sight of a bruise, or the scars on the backs of her hands; her skin prickles with heat, face flaming as her breathing picks up and panic floods her system, because she just can't stop thinking about what this could all mean, and it's so unfathomably unfair because everything's finally working out, and she has friends and Emily and –

_Fuck_, Naomi thinks, a broken sound escaping through the thickness in her throat. _Emily_.

Emily, who fought tooth and nail and Jenna Fitch for her, who loves gardening and _Blues Clues _and cheese and marmite sandwiches; Emily, who can't cycle to save her life and reads Tolstoy and Jane Austen and has the most brilliant cherry-red hair; Emily, who kisses her like she'll die if she doesn't, who holds her hand and cuddles into her side when they sit in Naomi's back garden and stare at the stars or the sunset, who makes love to her like they have all the time in the world to be young and in love and _them_. Emily, who Naomi loves more than she will ever love anything in her life.

It's that last thought that makes Naomi's eyes burn so that her vision blurs, and she jumps from her chair and mutters something hurriedly to Kieran about feeling sick (it's not a lie at all) before darting from the room, trying to escape the mindfuck that's making it damn near impossible for her to breathe. Naomi knows that that love runs both ways; Emily loves her so intensely it scares the shit out of her, that she could lose her or fuck everything up so easily and destroy the girl she loves. And that's why Naomi thinks that this just cannot be happening again, because it would absolutely _wreck _Emily, and Naomi never wants to hurt her, ever, so just, _No_, she thinks, feet pounding the vinyl floor of the hallway as she flees. _This isn't happening_.

Naomi closes her eyes and wishes with everything she has for that to be true.

Naomi is panting by the time she reaches the toilets, and she slides into a heap on the cold, tiled floor the second she locks the cubicle door, gasping for breath – she is suddenly, inexplicably tired, completely drained of energy. She quickly assures herself that she hasn't had anything to eat yet today, and she didn't sleep well and coursework is stressing her out (she hastily ignores the voice in her head that tells her she's been just shy of exhausted for the past few weeks now, and it's getting to the point where blaming the crazy sex she's been having with Emily just isn't cutting it, because if she listens to all the alternatives she'll lose her mind). _That's all it is. Stress._

It's not, though. And that's the fucking problem.

Naomi curls into herself, head dropping onto her knees as she runs her hands through her hair and bites her lip, desperately trying to stop the tears from falling. If she cries, it means there is something to cry about, and Naomi can't even begin to process what it could mean for her, for everyone, for Emily, and she just cannot deal with it right now, because it's too much, so quite frankly, it can just fuck off.

Naomi takes in deep, shuddering lungfuls of air to calm herself, rubbing her temples to ease the pain caused by her over-thinking; her fingertips come away slick with sweat, and she feels incredibly angry with herself for getting this worked up over nothing (it's not nothing). Sighing in frustration, she clambers to her feet shakily and unlocks the door.

Effy is waiting on the other side.

Naomi freezes. Effy is perched on the edge of the line of sinks, a lit cigarette hanging between her lips (Naomi briefly wonders how she didn't hear the click of a lighter, but then, she was sort of preoccupied), intense gaze focused on the girl in front of her, taking in her watery eyes and unsteady profile. Naomi watches Effy file it all away in her head, and feels fear snake its way into her stomach.

"Jesus Christ, Eff," Naomi manages, voice wavering only slightly as she ducks away from Effy's mind-raping eyes, busying herself with turning on the tap and letting the water cool her skin. "Scared me to death."

And fuck,_ that was the wrong thing to say_, Naomi thinks as her eyes widen and her heart skips several beats in her chest, kicking herself mentally when Effy notices her stiffen where she stands. "Sorry," Effy says, sounding anything but, breathing out a line of blue smoke that curls its way towards Naomi, who desperately tries not to flinch (though it makes bile rise in her throat). Effy pauses, gives her a once-over. "You look like shit."

Naomi rolls her eyes at that, turning off the tap and shaking her hands dry as she leans against a wall to face Effy, because she knows that, thank you very much, can see her reflection in the mirror; her eyes are tired and bright with unshed tears, the skin below them lilac from sleepless nights, and faint lines bracket her lips, holding in everything she can never say out loud. "Gee thanks, Effy. You sure know how to make a girl feel better."

"Better?" Effy questions, arching her eyebrows, at the exact same time Naomi curses herself internally for that slip of the tongue. _Be more careful, you twat._

"Yeah, well," Naomi begins cautiously, fidgeting with her shirt sleeve. "It's been a bit of a shit day. This dump is boring as fuck."

Effy smirks, taking a deep drag from her cigarette before flicking it away. It lands three inches from Naomi's feet; Naomi watches it burn silently, distracted by the bright orange glow. She looks up to find Effy staring her straight in the eyes. "Didn't think you got bored with Emily around."

Naomi knows exactly what Effy is playing at. "Emily's not here."

"Odd, considering."

"Considering what?"

"You know what." Naomi's eyes harden. "Something's wrong. Figured she'd be right alongside you, waiting to kiss it all better." A beat. "Still keeping secrets, aren't you, Naoms?"

Anger flares in Naomi's chest, white hot and sharp like the edge of a blade, because fuck Effy and her all-knowing, all-seeing bullshit, because she doesn't have a cunting clue about anything, about her or Emily. Naomi tells her as much with bitter eyes and a constricted throat, making a move to exit the bathroom in a thoroughly pissed off fashion –

A cool hand on her forearm stops her in her tracks.

"Emily didn't give you that bruise, Naomi." Effy's voice is quiet, solemn; it is the way her friend's voice almost breaks on her name that makes Naomi turn to face her, pleading with Effy with her eyes to just _drop it._

The brunette is having none of it – her grip on Naomi's arm tightens, and the blonde winces as the pressure aggravates the contusion on the inside of her wrist. She imagines blood vessels erupting underneath the surface of her skin, bursting under the weight of their own failures. Irreversible damage.

Naomi very nearly tells Effy, then, opens her mouth to wrap her tongue around the words, because she's actually really fucking scared and it's really fucking dangerous, the warning signs scarring her body like paint on a canvas, and she knows she can't possibly keep ignoring them. But Effy's eyes are fixed intently on her own, cobalt blue and wide with expectation; they remind Naomi of an entirely different life, of a man who she swears she still hates, whose own eyes are as blue as the hottest part of a flame, identical to her own – the only connection they still share after the years between. _That can't happen again._

Naomi tears her gaze away from Effy as something splinters in her chest, and when she spots the fire-bright red flame of Effy's cigarette butt winking at her from the floor, the words die in her throat; she has to protect Emily. She crushes the fag beneath her heel, watches as it breaks apart into ashes, the light extinguished.

"Everything's fine, Effy." Her voice is weak, a barely there whisper that struggles to span the distance between them. "Just leave it alone."

Naomi wrenches her arm free and escapes from the bathroom, blood pumping so fast through her veins she fears they'll break open from the pressure. She runs from Effy and everything she can't bring herself to think about, desperately trying to convince herself she's doing the right thing.

She's getting good at putting out fires.

Naomi waits for Emily outside of her Psychology classroom at the end of the day, after skipping her last period to chain-smoke behind the Art block (her lungs burned a little more than usual with every drag as an unfamiliar sickness settled in her stomach, but she was in dire need of a nicotine hit to calm herself down and it won't be smoking that kills her anyway, so whatever).

The second Naomi sees Emily coming out of the classroom door, mahogany eyes smiling when she sees the blonde standing there, Naomi knows she's seriously, seriously fucked, because there's just no way she can stand to see Emily looking at her any other way than this.

"Hey, babe," Emily says, walking to meet her and sliding small arms around her waist, pushing their lips together in a brief kiss; Naomi needs more, needs distracting, so she locks her hands around the back of the redhead's neck and strokes the fine hair she finds at the nape, pushing her tongue against Emily's lips. Emily gasps in surprise but grants her access nonetheless, opening her mouth and letting Naomi taste her like she's been dying to for the past hour, and as the kiss deepens, Naomi finds her mood lightening and everything seems a little brighter than before, as all the rainclouds hanging over her head develop a silver lining.

That's just what Emily does to her.

They break apart to catcalls and wolf-whistles, but Naomi doesn't give a shit, because Emily's smile is warm and open, and Naomi feels her heart swell because she's the only one who can make Emily smile like that. Naomi drops her hands down by her sides and interlocks her fingers with Emily's, pulling her out of the college doors.

"Missed me, did you?" Emily asks as they're wandering down the college steps, pointedly smirking in the blonde's direction.

Naomi feels her own lips twitch in response. _Of course I did, you twat. _"Eh," she shrugs, trying to keep a straight face. "To be honest, I thought you were Katie, and we've been secretly fucking behind your back for a while now, but I guess the cat's out of the bag – "

Emily smacks her upside the head with her free hand, telling her she's a stupid prick, and Naomi can't help but laugh at the adorable mock-scowl on her girlfriend's face. "I'm serious, Em, you could learn a thing or two; she does the most amazing keepy-uppy thing with her tongue – "

"Shut the fuck up, Naoms!" Emily cries, tearing her hand from Naomi's to clamp both of them over her ears and hurrying on ahead, while Naomi shouts after her through her laughter; she chases after Emily continuously on the way back to her house, pinning her against walls when she catches her and kissing her senseless, smoothing her hands over the softness of her skin and just _feeling. _Emily never gets too far away from her, and when Naomi's hands clutch at her waist and spin her around, her cheeks are dimpled from smiling, hair bright like burning paper in the late-afternoon sun as she curls into Naomi's arms, aquiescing.

These are the moments that Naomi lives for.

Emily is the most beautiful thing Naomi has ever seen.

They are lying on Naomi's bed, the blonde's head in her girlfriend's lap as Emily leans against the headboard, lazily dragging one hand through Naomi's curls whilst she grips a book tightly in the other, reading aloud – Naomi loves the sound of her voice, how it's soft and husky and makes every word sound safe in her mouth. Naomi's not really paying attention to the story Emily is telling, but rather the way her rose-petal lips are moving, the darkness of her eyes around the iris; the blinds are closed, and in the muted light of the room Emily's skin is silver, her hair a shock of brilliant colour against it.

Emily notices Naomi staring up at her, and the blonde smiles sheepishly, caught in the act, reaching up with her right hand to stroke the swell of Emily's cheek; she closes her eyes at the feeling, dropping the book and resting her hands on Naomi's shoulders. Emily hums in contentment as Naomi's hand travels lower, tracing the slope of her neck, the curve of her shoulder, before linking with Emily's own. "You stopped reading."

Emily laughs at Naomi's pout, stroking her fingertips over the blonde's mouth until it smoointo a smile. "You stopped listening," she says, smiling fondly and without a hint of anger.

"Did not," Naomi replies childishly, rolling onto her stomach and propping herself up onto her elbows, grinning at Emily. "We were at the bit where Andrew and Johnathon decide to go to Mexico."

Emily raises her eyebrows. "We're reading 'Spot Tells the Time,' Naoms. We finished reading the Buffy book yesterday. You got really mad that Xander saved the world, because it's supposed to be a show about female empowerment and how strong and independent women are, and 'bloody Xander's a useless fucking prick.'"

Naomi frowns. "Oh yeah." Emily smirks at her, point proved. "Why the fuck are we reading 'Spot tells the time,' Em?"

Emily's facial expression turns a little defensive. "Because. It's very educational. And I love Spot the dog."

Naomi smiles widely at the adorable look on Emily's face, equal parts daring Naomi to contradict and mild embarrassment. "Spot is definitely the coolest cartoon dog there is, Em, for sure," she says, nodding emphatically whilst trying not to laugh, leaning in to kiss the indignant look off Emily's face.

"I've been thinking," Emily says when they pull apart, eyes so bright with excitement that Naomi feels her heart warm in her chest, and she squeezes Emily's hand to prompt her to continue. "We should go travelling next year, just the two of us; put university on hold for a bit." The corners of her mouth curl up into a small smile as an idea comes to her. "Mexico, maybe."

Emily is looking at her expectantly, a world of possibilities charging the air between them; Naomi had always planned on getting the fuck out of Bristol the second she was finished with college (it's a shitty place and she hates it) but she'd always imagined buggering off to a university in London, or Manchester, somewhere she could study politics so she could get a job and finally make a difference in the world like she'd always intended – but now she has Emily.

There will be time for growing up, maturing and becoming a respected member of society, Naomi thinks – that option will always be there, waiting for her. Naomi hopes with everything she has that that will always be true regarding Emily, too, but everything is so fragile, and they might never have the chance to do this again, be so reckless and spontaneous, and Naomi can see how badly Emily wants this for them. So she humours her, for a moment; closes her eyes, and conjures up a mental picture of Emily on a beach at sunset, the sun a slash of red in the sky, devilish grin on her face as she strips off her clothes and beckons Naomi into the peaceful waters; the two of them at a bar, getting shitfaced on something local, slurring their speech with their fingers locked for stability, laughing uncontrollably as they dance together; a year full of Emily, a scrapbook of memories made up of long moments of laughter and making love and and fucking awesomeness, seeing the world through a haze of bright red and dark brown.

Naomi opens her eyes to find Emily looking slightly uncertainly back at her. Naomi closes the gap between them, stealing Emily's lips in a kiss in answer. She travels the length of Emily's body, overwhelmed by a whirlwind of emotion, the way she kisses Emily's thighs and draws patterns on her skin with her tongue easily translated into _I love you._

It's her way of saying yes.

The thought hits her in the night like a shot to the back of her head and has her sprinting out her bedroom door to the bathroom where she vomits into the toilet repeatedly.

Naomi sobs quietly so as not to wake Emily, body shaking as she wipes the back of her hand across her mouth; guilt crashes over her like waves on a rocky shore, and she wretches again at the thought that she just made a promise to Emily about Mexico that she can't guarantee she can keep.

By next year, Naomi could be dead.


	4. Truth

**Author's Note:** Sorry for the long wait, I had to practise for my guitar exam, but it's all over and done with now. Thank you so much for all the reviews and people adding me to story alerts and favourite authors lists and things, I really am incredibly grateful. I hope you enjoy this update :)

People get hurt.

They fall over and slam into things, suffer through earthquakes and hurricanes; they get their hearts broken and lose the people they love, contract illnesses and become seized by disease.

There is always something to show for it – always. Their suffering brands them with battle scars; white lines that never fade from their skin, marks that cannot be erased; cuts and bruises that don't always last, but that can still be felt long after they're gone, out of sight but not out of mind; they wear broken hearts on their sleeves, smiles that stretch their faces all wrong, because they let someone in who fucked them over and left them alone to deal with the aftermath. All of it tells a story, the words written on war-weary bodies, making all the shit that ever happened to them fucking impossible to forget.

That is all Naomi wants. To forget.

She wants to forget that all of this is familiar, every sign and symptom reminiscent of years before. She wants to forget how she suffered, how everything hurt all the time and how something was always breaking in her mother's eyes. She wants to forget that this ruined her life, took away her innocence and her childhood and her fucking father.

Naomi wants to forget, but she _can't, _because she can't even look at herself without the thoughts exploding in her head, firing from every synapse and nerve ending in her brain, triggered by the sight of the contusions that are blooming on her body; she needs to get rid of them, needs them to be gone so she can have some fucking peace inside her head and live in denial just that little bit longer.

People get hurt by other people.

But sometimes people hurt themselves.

It is that thought that makes Naomi pick herself up from the cold tile of the bathroom floor, where she had slumped against the toilet in defeat and utter exhaustion, and make her way shakily towards the medecine cabinet that's fixed above the sink. She takes the razor with steady hands, slides to the floor with her back pressed into the bath, and starts breaking apart the plastic with her hands. She knows this is really fucking stupid and will solve absolutely nothing, but she is desperate to experience the burn of a different kind of pain than the one that is making her eyes water and her stomach clench, desperate to change the problem into one she knows how to fix, that she can control.

Naomi frees the blade easily. She rolls up the shirt sleeve of her left arm to the soundtrack of her heart beating unsteadily in her ears, and Naomi listens to it carefully, thinking of the logistics of Morse code and searching for hidden messages, all too eager for something to tell her what the fuck she should do.

Naomi sees the bruise on her wrist, big and black and malignant, and she loses it.

She drags the blade over her skin in quick, jagged lines, whimpering at the fierce sting that immediately follows, and she cuts harder and faster as the blood wells up from the wounds and slides down her arm, burying the bruises she is dying to be rid of. It really fucking hurts, and Naomi squeezes her eyes shut against the pain and relishes it, the glorious distraction from all the shit she vehemently refuses to process. She cuts until the bruised skin is torn to pieces, unrecognisable from the damage, and she doesn't have to think about it anymore.

It feels good, but fuck, there is a lot of blood; it has soaked into the material of her shirt, is hot and slick on her arms and hands and thighs, pooling on the bathroom floor, and Naomi panics, rushes to the sink and tries to wash it all away. The pressure from the water stings like a bitch, and as it clears the blood from her injured arm, the cuts she's made become visible, a criss-cross pattern of lines that mask a horror Naomi refuses to relive again.

She presses a wad of toilet paper to her skin until the bleeding stops, before tugging her shirt over her head and tossing it in the bin; it is only when she goes to clean the blood off the tiles that it hits her.

_Red._

Suddenly, Emily is everywhere – Naomi can feel her in her veins, her head, her heart, and it makes her pick up the blade from the bathroom sink and dig the metal edge into every bruise in her line of sight, and she's fucking crying while at it, but she doesn't let up until every black and blue bit of skin is a brilliant red and there's not a trace of the truth to be found.

;;

By the time Emily wakes, Naomi has cleaned up the bathroom so that it no longer looks like a slaughter house and has showered and dressed, concealed in a long-sleeved black shirt and dark blue jeans even though it's pushing thirty degrees outside.

(She doesn't want Emily to see).

"Morning, beautiful," Naomi whispers, crouching before Emily at the side of her bed and brushing her tousled fringe back from her forehead; the sleepy smile she receives in return makes guilt pool in her stomach. It feels heavy, like it's been lined with lead.

"Morning," Emily replies, voice hoarse and deliciously husky from sleep, leaning in to kiss Naomi. It's all very lovely and warm and enjoyable until Emily starts to suck on Naomi's bottom lip, run her palms over her tits and down her ribcage and then Naomi's pulling away and pushing her hands off because she knows where this is going and if Emily sees the state of her –

"Em, not now – we'll be late for college," Naomi mumbles, carefully avoiding Emily's eyes, which she knows will be darkened with hurt and confusion at the rejection.

She feels a hand on her shoulder and chances a glance upward; Emily's brow is furrowed, and the blatant concern on her face makes Naomi feel like the world's biggest twat. "Everything okay, Naoms?" Emily asks, smoothing her hand down the blonde's arm comfortingly; her fingertips ghost over the lacerations Naomi's made in her skin, and she snatches her arm away lightning quick, panic-stricken and gasping as the wound throbs painfully like an erratic pulse. "Naoms?" Emily's voice is laced with worry as she sits up in the bed and reaches out for her girlfriend.

"Don't!" Naomi snaps, increasing the distance between them as she scrambles backwards, visibly shaken; it hurts to have Emily touch her, when she's like this, when she's done what she's done to herself, because the pain and distress it would cause her is something Naomi wants to never have to witness – though that was why she cut the shit out of herself in the first place, to keep Emily safe; it would hurt less, Naomi thinks, this lie (although lying to Emily leaves a bitter taste on her tongue and at the back of her throat, acidic, slowly dissolving her deceptions, and she knows it's only a matter of time before the truth comes out). But it would hurt nonetheless.

Emily has recoiled in shock, her large doe eyes wide and turned down the corners, shining with something that squeezes Naomi's heart so tight she fears it will burst in her chest, and she really fucking hates how despite her best efforts and promises and lies, she is breaking Emily all over again.

Time is suspended between them for a long moment, Naomi frantically searching for a way to fix things, because this is totally fucked now, because Emily knows that Naomi is keeping something from her; it's written in the shape of her mouth, the confusion in her eyes. But then Emily is a blur of movement, throwing off the duvet and leaping from the bed, and Naomi's stuttering out words that she's positive make no sense (she sounds like fucking JJ, for Christ's sake) and she moves to stand up and stop Emily from leaving. But though Emily is dressing hastily, throwing on random pieces of clothing, she's still predominantly naked, and Naomi can see the smooth skin of her back and shoulderblades, perfectly _flawless, _and jealousy flares within her, sewing her throat shut and seizing up her muscles, and she can only watch helplessly as Emily leaves her.

Before she does, Emily fixes Naomi with a look that is equal parts angry and incredibly hurt, and it's so horrible Naomi forces herself to keep looking, because she deserves to feel like complete and utter shit. "I thought we were past this," she says, and the words sound like broken glass, shredding her throat. "I thought…" Emily takes a deep breath. "You're supposed to trust me, Naoms. You're not supposed to hide things from me anymore." Emily's eyes are hard, accusing, but Naomi can see the hurt lurking behind them, like distant images underwater. She takes a small step towards the blonde. "So please, just tell me – what's going on?"

Naomi stares long and hard at the pleading look on Emily's face, the tears that are threatening to spill over her cheeks.

(She's seen this before, except the crying eyes were blue like her own, watering under the weight of Naomi's failures, and it wasn't truth they were pleading for.

Then he left. And never came back).

Naomi stays silent. Emily leaves.

Naomi prays with absolutely every fibre of her being that unlike her father, Emily isn't gone for good.

;;

Later that night, Naomi's world disintegrates around her.

Effy had come to see her earlier in the day (she'd decided that college could fuck itself – she really wasn't in the mood, and it wasn't like her mother gave a rat's arse anyway) and they had smoked an entire pack of Malboro Lights between them in Naomi's back garden before either of them uttered a word.

And it was nice, the silence, calming; Naomi had been grateful for the chance to clear her head, work through every racing thought that plagued her without anyone pushing her for answers she doesn't have or know how to give (it didn't work. She still has no fucking clue what to do) and Effy's presence had been comforting, almost.

They had laid side by side on the grass, shoulders, elbows and feet touching, and Naomi had thought that if she labelled people in such a way, Effy would be her best friend; she had Cook, too, but he was still always trying to sleep with her, and she and Katie couldn't quite be alone for long periods of time without arguing about some shit or the other, and Emily – well, Emily was something entirely different.

"I'm sorry about yesterday," Naomi said, staring straight up at the sky; the sun's harsh glare had burned patches of orange into her eyelids. She fiddled with her lighter, sending a flash of flame dangerously close to the skin of her hand. "That was a bit shit."

Effy looked over at her, and Naomi clicked the lighter again, felt the burning heat against her thigh beneath the fabric of her jeans. "Yeah," Effy agreed, blinking slowly. "You're forgiven," she added, and Naomi could hear the smirk in her voice, couldn't help but smile herself.

Effy rolled onto her side, propped herself up on an elbow and focused intently on Naomi's face to catch her reaction: "Emily's angry at you."

The blonde flicked her eyes in Effy's direction, throat and jaw tight, and she had to force her words out. "I know." A beat. "I fucked up again."

"She knows you're hiding something," Effy revealed, taking in Naomi's attire with a solemn face, how it covered almost every inch of her skin. Naomi's heart rate sped up. "Said you wouldn't let her touch you."

Naomi bit her lip hard, stayed silent.

"She also said something about bruises."

When Naomi flicked the lighter that time, her hand had been shaking so badly it slipped, her fingers briefly caught in the white-hot flame, and a strangled noise escaped her throat that had little to do with the pain. Effy snatched the lighter off her and threw it across the grass, interlocking her fingers with Naomi's burned ones and resting them over the blonde's chest, directly above the bruise everyone but Effy assumed to be Emily's fault; a bruise that had now been distorted and disfigured with the metal edge of a blade, disguised as a symptom of something entirely different. Naomi felt her eyes water as Effy pressed their conjoined hands against the mark beneath her shirt, feeling with her fingertips the raised and scabbed skin, reading it like braille, part of a story with an ending Naomi is so fucking scared of she just can't admit it's happening.

"There was a boy in my primary school called Eric," Effy stated quietly, and Naomi flinched at the use of the past tense. "We used to play together, draw pictures and do puzzles and play twenty questions. He was lovely." _No no no no no, please just shut up…_

(Naomi didn't want to know).

"Eric got sick," Effy said. "He was tired all the time, too tired to play games, so we'd sit beneath a tree in the playground away from the other kids and be quiet together." Effy's voice was straining, rough around the edges and Naomi wished she'd stop talking because she knew what Effy was getting at (though she was desperately pretending she didn't). "He was always little, but he got smaller and smaller week after week, and his skin starting changing colour in places; he was blue and purple and black all over, and not once did anyone think to send him to a doctor to see what was wrong."

Something in Effy's face changed, and Naomi braced herself.

"We were sitting under the tree one day when Eric started screaming in agony and bleeding from every orifice he had. He was dead within a minute."

Effy was trying not to cry, her bright eyes wet and her grip on Naomi's hand tightening, and Naomi felt hot tears slide down her own cheeks, scorching her skin, because she could see the memory flash in her friend's eyes; _how incredibly fucking awful, to see something like that, _she thought, just as the danger of her denial hit her hard in the gut and she nearly crumpled into herself. Effy bent down to press a kiss to Naomi's forehead, before curling her body around her and promising, "I won't let that be you, Naomi."

Naomi had cried into Effy's neck until her throat was raw, neither girl moving as the sun died behind the clouds in a kaleidoscope of colour. "I'm scared, Eff," Naomi whispered, pulling back to look her friend in the eye. "I'm so fucking scared."

Effy remained silent, but the black smudges under her eyes, the tight line of her mouth and the grip she had on Naomi's body told her that Effy was scared, too.

;;

Hours later, when Effy has gone home to check on Anthea with promises to return at some point, Naomi is still lying on the grass, which has cooled with the night air and acts like a balm against the skin of her back where her shirt has ridden up, and it's proving to be very soothing. She is still crying, a steady flow of tears tracking across her cheeks, because she's stopped lying to herself, and that was the only thing that had been holding her together. Naomi thinks of the last time this had happened, how she had collapsed into her father's arms and screamed about the injustice of it all, praying to God she'd make it through alive.

She had. But now it's back. And Naomi knows she might not be alive for much longer.

That thought vanishes from her head when she hears the screaming; it is distant, but Naomi can feel it echoing in her head and vibrating in her bones; when Naomi realises it's coming from her own house, she's on her feet so fast she almost plummets to the floor again. She shoots through the back door, establishes the sound is coming from upstairs, and that the person screaming is her mother.

Acoustics tell her that her mum is in the bathroom, and Naomi is pretty sure she has never moved so fast in her life – she is relatively certain she knows what this is all about, and a mantra of _no no no no no please God no _is playing in her head even as she crashes through the bathroom door and sees that actually, _yes._

Gina is sprawled on the tiled floor, eyes red and shining and choking out words that make no sense, clutching Naomi's t-shirt in her hands, the t-shirt that is soiled with her blood, the silver blade that caused all the damage abandoned on the floor in front of her. Naomi feels sick to her stomach.

"Shhh, mum it's okay, it's okay," Naomi stutters out, voice breaking on every word as she kneels in front of Gina and tugs the blood-stained material from her hands, tossing it to the side along with the blade, and _fuck, why didn't I hide it or throw it away and fuck fuck fuck – _

"Naomi," Gina cries, staring at her with devastated eyes (Naomi feels shame and guilt flood every single cell in her body at the horror she's caused), "what did you do?"

Naomi opens and closes her mouth, shaking her head as more tears leak from her eyes, blurring her vision (she can still see the pain etched into every feature of her mum's face). She hates herself for doing this to Gina, because this isn't new either, the sharp edges and scars and lies and blood, and she knows damn well how fucking much it hurt her mum the first time, and Jesus she's a selfish bitch –

"Naomi!" Her voice is louder now, pleading, her hands shaking her daughter's shoulders, "what the fuck did you do?"

The words won't come, and they wouldn't make sense anyway, because this isn't about the self harm, not at all; it's about history repeating itself, _again_, in the worst fucking way possible, and the words she needs to explain that to her mum won't fit in her head, or roll off her tongue, because it's far too big for her to handle alone. So instead, Naomi fists the material of her shirt into her hands, pulls it over her head, and reveals the horror she's been hiding.

The sound Gina lets out when she sees the mess Naomi's made of herself is heart-wrenching, a dissonant, stacatto note that rips into Naomi's body deeper than any pocketknife or scalpel ever has. Naomi can't stand to look at her face, because she hasn't even shown her the worst of it yet and Gina is torn to pieces already.

"I'm so sorry," Naomi whispers, dreading what she has to do next.

Naomi turns around on the bathroom floor, and feels her heart break when her mother screams.

(The bruises are still visible on her back, where Naomi had not been able to see or reach them with the blade, unable to carve them from her skin like the others to keep up the pretense of normality; they are still there, refusing to fade, and it tells Gina exactly what is going on).

The word hangs between them, malignant, as Gina spins her daughter back round and crushes her to her chest, and Naomi feels it resonate in her bones as she squeezes her mum back twice as hard.

_Relapse._


	5. Time is running out part one

**Author's Note:** Part five. Thanks so much to everyone who has reviewed and read this, it's totally awesome of you guys. This chapter is extra long, so I've split it into two parts (if you review both parts separately, I'll give you a cookie ***crosses heart*** Enjoy

Everything is white.

The walls, the bedsheets, her hospital gown, the doctors' coats, their surgical masks, her skin, the light bursting through the window that runs parallel to her bed, and it's making Naomi's eyes hurt, her head, too, and she already feels shitty enough as it is; the backs of her hands are sore, from the nurse's trying to stick her with an IV; she feels sick to her stomach, so nauseous she can barely move without provoking the urge to vomit; Naomi is _scared,_ and she's alone, and everyone's left her, and everything really fucking hurts –

Naomi smells the blood before she sees it, detects the metallic and coppery scent as she draws air into her lungs, and she freezes where she lays on her hospital bed. Naomi watches with her heart in her throat as the white sheets turn red, blood leaking from her body and spilling to the floor like a crimson waterfall, and she's already screaming by the time the pain kicks in and fires through her body like an electric current.

There are people everywhere, suddenly, and she hears things like _code blue _and _rectal bleeding _and her mother crying in the hallway, wracking sobs that hurt more than whatever the fuck is rapidly killing her where she lays, and there are hands all over her, helping, healing, shaking –

– and then Naomi is awake and upright in her bed, skin slippery with sweat and drawing harsh breaths into her lungs as Effy pulls her close and rubs her back with both hands, trying to soothe her; Effy's voice in her ear pushes the last mental pictures of her nightmare out of her head, and then Naomi is crying against her and gripping her body tightly with shaking hands.

Naomi hears Effy say things like _it's okay, Naoms _and _I'm here_ and _it was just a dream._

(Naomi nods against her neck, pressing her forehead to the cool skin of Effy's shoulder, even as every empty space in her body closes up and she feels dizzy from a lack of oxygen. She doesn't have the words to tell Effy that it wasn't a dream that's got her blood running cold in her veins, her pulse racing like a butterfly beating it's wings erratically beneath her skin.

The word _memory _sticks in her throat, a truth she's not ready to share).

;;

Naomi wakes for the second time somewhere around daybreak; the sky is still pink and beginning to glow softly as the sun rises, different shades of pastel colours that overlap and blend together. She shuts her eyes tightly and turns away from her window (she can't stand to look at the beauty of the world when her own is so dark and twisted and ugly).

A hand on her knee turns her attention to the foot of her bed, where Gina is sat watching her, eyes tired and red, and looking as exhausted as she feels; Naomi sits up and rubs the sleep from her eyes, running her hands through her sleep-tousled hair and threading her fingers with her mum's, squeezing lightly. It makes a vein in her wrist flex, and the mess of cuts in the skin there move with the muscle; Naomi winces when her mother's gaze drops to the wound, her face pinching like a lime, and she opens and closes her mouth as her heart clenches in her chest.

"I just wanted it to go away," she stutters out, after much deliberation, feeling far too ashamed too look Gina in the eye. "I didn't want to have to –" Naomi's voice breaks, catching on emotions she doesn't have a name for. She takes a deep, shuddery breath. "I'm just so fucking scared, y'know?"

And she is. She's absolutely fucking terrified. Naomi is sick of doctors and tests and treatments, and she has grown to hate hospitals with a fiery vengeance, can't stand the sight or smell of them. She had spent months at a time just lying in a hospital bed, being poked and prodded and hooked up to monitors, seeing death reflected in the window panes fitted into the walls, or the eyes of those around her; it was an ever-present threat, hiding in the corners of her room, the shadows in the hall, a lingering scent in her linens. It contaminated every inane conversation she had with her parents where they acted like everything was fine, laced every single word that fell from their trembling lips to the point where it was less painful to sit in silence and listen to her mother cry, because at least the heartache and devastation her sobs translated to was honest.

(Of course, what scares her most is what will happen to the people around her in the face of this, how they will hurt and bleed when she does, how they will see how she's failed them and take back the promises they have made to always be there, even when times are hard. What scares Naomi the most, is just how much she's got to lose).

A warm palm against the skin of her cheek makes Naomi look up and meet her mother's gaze. A few days ago she would have flinched, swatted her away and mumbled her embarrassment, but now, Naomi clings to the moment and burns the touch into her memory.

(Just in case).

"I know," Gina says, and the way the words come out, like despair is lining her throat and suffocating her words as she speaks them does something to Naomi's heart that feels a lot like it's being ripped down the middle. "I'm scared, too."

They stay that way for a while, fingers knotted together against the lilac of Naomi's sheets, and Naomi thinks of telephone wires drawing lines on the horizon as a thousand words pass between them in silence; minutes pass before long fingers curl around her wrist in a loose embrace, and Naomi realises that Effy has woken beside her. She smiles weakly at the brunette, who presses a gentle kiss to her temple in response, and Naomi can't help but feel relieved that at this moment, she doesn't have to pretend; they know, they know everything's fucked up and she's in serious shit and this could very well be the end of her, but she doesn't have to face it alone anymore; the fear she feels in her bones and the thoughts that burn like fireworks with lit fuses in her head are still present, but Naomi knows that if they explode and send her reeling, blinded by the sheer horror of their reality, she has people to hold her together when she breaks.

;;

(Yesterday night, Effy had come back to Naomi's house to find her and Gina still collapsed on the bathroom floor, and had untangled them from each other, escorted a sobbing Gina downstairs to the kitchen and put the kettle on before running Naomi a bath and stripping her down to her underwear and helping her into it; she had drawn the hot water over the bruised skin of her back, taken special care to clean out the cuts she'd made on her arms, legs and stomach, her hands unsteady as she tended to the one just above her heart.

"We are going to fix this," Effy had said, arms and hands blurry and out of focus beneath the water. "You're going to get better."

Effy had looked directly into her eyes as she spoke, and Naomi felt her exposed skin heat up along with the rest of her, something akin to hope warming in her chest and spreading through her body. "Thanks, Effy," she'd whispered. And then, "I'm glad you're here."

(Effy's eyes were the wrong colour and she smelled of smoke instead of vanilla, but it was comforting to have her there all the same).

Later, they all sat at the kitchen table, Naomi and Effy across from Gina; Naomi's hair and skin were still damp from her bath, and she had shivered in her seat until the brunette had wrapped an arm around her shoulders and curled into her side, and it was so reminiscent of something Emily would do that something started aching in Naomi's chest.

Her mum broke the silence that had settled over them in the aftermath of the chaos. "How long have you –"

"Not long," Naomi interrupted, injecting far more conviction into her words than she actually felt. "I didn't know – I didn't notice until a few days ago – Sunday, I think –"

"Why the hell didn't you say anything?" Gina yelled, hands curled into fists on the table top, and Naomi flinched at the outburst, dropped her gaze to her lap (though her mum's pain still diffused the space between them, pricked sharply against her skin). "You know how dangerous this is, how fast it progresses! God, Naomi, how could you be so stupid –"

Anger had spiked through her entire body and had her jumping from her chair as if a fire had sparked beneath it. "You don't get it, do you?" Naomi cried, putting as much distance between her and Gina as possible, pacing across the tile. "This can't be happening again, okay, it just can't! You don't get to tell me I'm stupid, because you have no fucking clue how hard it is to have done this over and over and know that you have to do it all again, all of it – the fucking treatment that is supposed to make me better, but actually makes me feel so fucking awful I wish I was dead; being terrified all the time, knowing you could be dead in a second, not having a clue how much it's going to hurt or what happens to you afterwards; having to watch _you_ suffer," Naomi choked out, "because you can't stand to see me be sick."

Naomi exhaled shakily, leaning against the countertop and rubbing her face with her hands. "I can't do this again," she breathed, tiredly, before meeting the gazes of the women in front of her, staring at them imploringly. "I don't want to die."

Gina had shook her head fiercely as her face had hardened, and declared, "You're not going to die, Naomi, I won't let it happen." She rose from the table and strode over to her daughter, smoothed her hands over her shoulders. "You're strong, Naomi, you've beaten this before – you can do it again," she stated, even as Naomi was shaking her head in disagreement, "yes, you _can, _I know you can. You have to, okay? Because I fucking love you, Naomi, and I'm not letting you go without a fight."

Naomi took a deep breath, flicked her eyes over to Effy who was openly crying, a pleading look in her eyes, and she found herself nodding at her mum before bursting into tears, suffocating under a fear so intense it threatened to tear her apart at the seams; this was real, and Naomi felt as if she had been drenched with ice water, the numbing cold seeping into her bones and settling there, at the thought that she might not be alive much longer.

It was too much to bear, and she'd be damned if she was going to burden anyone else with the horror of it.

"Don't tell anyone," she begged, breaking free from her mum's death grip so she could talk to Effy, too, and make sure they both understood. "Please," she sniffed, wiping tears from her cheeks, "please don't tell Emily."

"Love, you can't keep something like this from her –"

"I can," she swore, "I can and I will. She can't – it would destroy her."

The truth of her words was inarguable, and was met with silence. Effy broke it with a truth of her own.

"She loves you, Naoms. She really, fucking loves you."

"I know," Naomi replied, resolve tightening her mouth and darkening her eyes. "That's why she can never know.")


	6. Time is running out part two

Emily wakes up Wednesday morning feeling like absolute shit.

When Naomi hadn't turned up at college, Emily had been sorely tempted to go back to her house to make amends, but the look on Naomi's face when Emily had tried to touch her – like she was _repulsed _by the mere thought of it – still stung too sharply, like salt rubbed in open wounds. She was pissed off with Naomi, who was hiding from her again, when she'd promised her that there would be no more lies, or secrets, that she had stopped running from her.

_Bullshit, _Emily thought angrily.

It was easier to be angry at her girlfriend than to be hurt by her actions (and she was really fucking hurt, because it was so reminiscent of last year and Emily hated the thought that they were backtracking) so she buried it, hid it beneath a façade of fury and vented her frustrations to Katie and Effy, the latter of whom absorbed the information silently and disappeared soon afterward.

"Weird," Katie had muttered, as they watched Effy sashay away from them down the college steps. The brunette twin shook her head, turned her attention back to her sister. "But listen babes, don't worry about Campbell, yeah? She's a proper fucking prick sometimes, but it's disgustingly obviously that she's like, head over heels in love with you," Katie continued, nudging Emily with her shoulder, a hand on her knee. "She's probably just in a piss about how too many people are leaving lights on and killing the bloody polar bears or something."

Emily cracked a smile at that, incredibly pleased that Katie was being somewhat nice to Naomi. "Oh come off it, Katie," Emily replied, a teasing look in her eye. "You can't pretend to hate her anymore. I've seen the way you two act together when you think no one's looking; you like each other."

"We do not!" Katie protested, face glowing hotly as she gesticulated wildly to emphasise her point. "We just hate each other less. She's not like, a total lezza bitch anymore is all, and she makes you bloody ecstatic – for the most part." Katie became serious for a moment. "Campbell doesn't know how not to be a dick some of the time, Ems. She was fucking terrified of letting you in, but she did it in the end 'cause she loves you too much not to. It was like, a big fucking adjustment for her, being in a relationship and sharing her feelings and shit, and she's not used to it – she's bound to relapse some of the time. But it doesn't mean she doesn't love you."

Emily stared at Katie in shock. "That was surprisingly insightful and understanding of you, Kay."

"Yeah, well, someone has to be when you're acting like a tit. And as much as I hate to admit it, you could do a whole lot worse than Naomi, Ems."

"So you _do _like her," Emily grinned, laughing as Katie told her to fuck off before becoming serious herself.

"I just don't know what to think, you know?" Emily said, worrying her lip between her teeth and turning to face her twin more fully. "About the bruises, I mean. I don't think she thought I would see the others, the ones on her back, because it was really dark in her room when we –" Emily broke off, made a vague hand gesture that Katie snorted at, before continuing, "I'm just so worried, that someone could be hurting her."

The thought of it made Emily's eyes feel like she'd opened them in salt water, made her stomach turn like she'd swallowed an ocean of it. Katie slid her fingers between her twin's, pressed their palms together. "Her mum is proper lovely, Em. You know that. And Campbell wouldn't stand for that sort of shit anyway." Emily stayed silent, her fears not completely quelled. "Look," added Katie, tilting Emily's chin up so she could look her in the eye, "we'll talk to her about it, okay? And if she acts like a complete tosser again we'll get Effy to smash her head in with a rock."

Emily's mouth turned up at the corners, mirroring the smirk gracing her twin's face. "What if she tells us something awful?" the redhead asked, solemn once again.

Katie paused, her own fears becoming apparent in the set of her mouth, the creases around her eyes. "We help her through it." The older girl rummaged around in her twin's bag with her free hand and pulled out her phone, pressed it into her hand. "Call her," she said simply, before kissing Emily's forehead and standing up to return to college.

Emily had, dozens of times, and sent twice as many messages, but Naomi wasn't answering; she had moped about all evening until Katie had dragged her out of their house to a club where they'd gotten shitfaced on shots and MDMA before stumbling home at around three in the morning and collapsing into bed.

When Emily got up for college just four hours later, she was seriously regretting the night's excursions.

"Oh, just go round and see her, for fuck's sake," Katie sighs with exasperation as she catches Emily checking her phone for the eighth time since they sat down for breakfast with the rest of the Fitch family. "You need to bloody kiss and make up already."

Emily kicks James in the shin before he can ask something innappropriate about how exactly her and Naomi 'make up,' before shooting a spectacular glare Katie's way; her head is pounding like there's a fucking kick drum beating against her skull, and the last thing she needs is –

"Trouble in paradise, darling?"

The condescension dripping from her mother's words makes Emily's blood boil in her veins, and she has to work very hard to not stab Jenna with her fork. "No," Emily bites out. "Me and Naomi are fine."

"That's great, love," Rob says, smiling at her before sending Jenna a warning look, even as the Scottish woman's grin grows a little wider, and she looks so excited at the prospect of her and Naomi breaking up that Emily feels her face flush hot and crimson; Naomi could be in real trouble, and all her mum cares about is getting the dirty, corrupting lesbian out of the picture.

"I think it's great, too," chimes James. "Naomi's always super nice to me and she's well fit – her tits are brilliant. Does she like it when you play with them?"

Normally, Emily would tell James to fuck off and slap him around the head for being a perve, but Jenna looks so disgusted that Emily can't help but smirk vindictively at her mother and say, "Yes, James. She _really _likes it." Emily stares Jenna straight in the eyes. "But not as much as I do."

Jenna drops her cutlery and says _Emily _in a tone so appalled that the younger twin nearly laughs; instead, she drags her chair away from their _six-seater table _and storms upstairs to take a shower.

_Fuck college, _she thinks as she steps under the hot spray. She needs to see her girlfriend.

;;

Naomi, Gina and Effy arrive at the hospital shortly after seven; the rest of the world has yet to wake, but the enormous building is buzzing with activity, ambulances skidding across the concrete as they speed in and out of their docking space, red and blue lights flashing and sirens blaring, disturbing the stillness of the air. Naomi watches as people are unloaded from the backs of the vehicles and stretchered off, blood spattering their bodies and bones poking through their skin. She remembers the last time she rode in an ambulance, the way the metal of the stretcher had been too cold against her skin, how the speed at which they travelled made bile creep up her throat, and she says a silent prayer into the sky for these people to make it through alive.

Effy takes her hand as they enter the hospital through the sliding glass doors, Gina leading the way; her fingers are longer than the ones she's used to, but they fit with hers all the same, and Naomi is grateful for Effy's presence, sends a small smile her way to show it.

The second they step inside, Naomi is hit by a sense of nostalgia so strong she nearly doubles over at the force of it; there are three floors in her line of sight, connected by a staricase that twists its way between them like a vine, glass panels running along the sides of the walkways and reflecting the scene below. Doctors and nurses are scrambling about on every floor, fumbling with their pagers or patient charts; Naomi catches sight of a doctor talking to a sobbing family of four (the fifth is ice cold and stiff on a gurney somewhere, eyes dead and lifeless beneath their eyelids) and she is reminded of why she hates this place so much – people always leave missing something they came in with, an empty space in their chests that never stops aching, no matter how much time passes by.

The three of them make their way towards the front desk, before a voice calling Naomi's name stops them in their tracks.

The blonde turns toward the sound of the familiar voice, apprehension settling in her stomach as the woman skates towards them, courtesy of the wheelie-sneaks on her feet; her hair is longer now, Naomi notes, falling past her shoulders in gentle waves, and her cobalt eyes are alight with surprise (Naomi is used to seeing them clouded with tears, a reflex reaction to reading her test results or prognosis). The doctor slides to a halt in front of them, and Naomi greets her nervously. "Hello, Arizona."

Arizona smiles at them all, opens her mouth to say something before stopping abruptly. Her eyes grow wide and her body freezes as she registers the pained expressions on their faces, the fresh dark blue bruises on Naomi's arms, the way she is clinging to Effy's hand tightly. "No," Arizona breathes, shaking her head as she glances between them, "not again."

They remain silent, and Naomi feels as if all the sound has been sucked from the cavernous space, like they're stuck in a black hole or vacuum, unable to communicate as their lungs are starved of oxygen. Arizona's face twists into an expression of such distress Naomi feels as though knifed.

(When Gina breaks down for the third time, it is Arizona who pulls her mother into her arms and comforts her as they mourn the destruction of fifteen years of fighting the same battle, and as Naomi observes the wreckage, a thought burns in the back of her mind:

Everything is in pieces, and it can only be stitched back together so many times before the edges start to fray and it unravels, permanently).

;;

The next hour is a blur of medical procedures Naomi knows like the back of her hand, and that she hates more than anything else in the world.

Naomi lies on her stomach in a hospital bed, clad in a papery white gown that makes her skin itch uncomfortably with familiarity, and she has to clench her hands into fists to stop herself from tearing it from her body; she shuts her eyes tightly to stop tears from spilling onto her cheeks and bites her lip to keep from screaming something childish – though undeniably true – like _this isn't fair! _(This test will only tell her what she already knows, that she's dangerously ill and much closer to death than any seventeen year old ever should be. It's written all over her and she can feel it like poison in her veins, but Naomi doesn't want to hear that what she fears is true, because that makes everything far too real for her to handle).

Naomi hears Effy inhale sharply from beside her, and knows that Arizona has returned to her room with the needle she will use to take her bone marrow aspiration; it is at least four inches long and several millimetres in diameter, and Naomi can recall the exact shape and size of it as well as she can picture the brightness of Emily's smile or the sunset shade of her hair. It won't hurt, Naomi knows, when the needle pierces her skin and abuts the bone of her iliac crest in the small of her back – the anaesthetic has already numbed the area, and she can't feel a thing really – but an ache sparks in her chest as Arizona (somewhat pointlessly) explains the procedure in a soothing voice, snapping on some surgical gloves, because she's taking something from Naomi that will bring her closer to the darkness that has coloured her past in shades of black too many times to count.

Naomi opens her eyes when the aspirate needle penetrates her body – there's no pain, but she can feel it distantly, like one would hear an echo in a cave – to find her mum staring at their conjoined hands and Effy gazing fixedly at her hips, mouth open slightly in horror; when the brunette winces, Naomi knows that Arizona has twisted the needle to advance it through the bony cortex and into the marrow cavity, and the colour drains from Effy's face as the doctor attaches a syringe and sucks liquid bone marrow from Naomi's body.

The needle slips out of her with a slick, wet sound, and Naomi very nearly wretches; she catches sight of the syringe as Arizona moves away from her, full of the dull red liquid that she carries in her bones. It is disgusting, the colour of unpolished rubies, and Naomi feels words form on the tip of her tongue: _take it all, _she wants to scream, _suck it all out of me until my bones are empty, and it can't kill me more than it already has._

It doesn't really matter, after all.

Naomi knows she's dead either way.

;;

One of the things Emily loves most about Naomi is the blue of her eyes.

It strikes her as she's lighting a cigarette on a bench near Richmond Hill that the shade of them is almost exactly the same as the centre of the flame from her lighter, bright and electric and beautiful. Naomi is very much like a fire, Emily thinks, how she's so consuming and intense and pretty to look at, hard to control; always trying to escape.

Emily sighs, draws smoke into her lungs and flicks ash from the end of her fag, watches as it curls away from her as she exhales, disappearing. Naomi hadn't been home when Emily had gone to her house, and Gina was nowhere to be found, either; Emily had called Katie to see if she'd shown up at college, but Naomi had skipped out again. Effy wasn't answering her phone, and the redhead had lost count of how many times she'd tried to call her girlfriend to no avail. Anxiety had begun to build in her chest, pushing against her ribs almost as hard as her heart was beating against them. She'd searched for Naomi in every place she could think of – she'd even gone down to the lake – and had finally given up and decided to smoke to calm herself down before she exploded from all the worrying.

A thousand different scenarios of what could have happened to Naomi are firing in Emily's head like tiny bullets, ricocheting off the inside of her skull and burying themselves in her brain. Each one is more horrifying than the last; the fact that Gina is missing too increases her fear tenfold – was she hurting Naomi? Was that why her beautiful girlfriend's body was patterned with bruises and black and blue all over, why she didn't want Emily to touch her?

Emily throws her fag to the ground in frustration, grinds the fire out with the toe of her shoe with much more force than is necessary to keep from screaming out her frustration; it's as she's running her hands through her fiery hair and looking to the horizon to calm herself that she sees her, right at the bottom of the hill beneath a tree, looking lovely as always and yet _so small _in her pig shirt, and before Emily knows what she's doing she's racing towards Naomi and throwing herself into her girlfriend's arms.

Naomi makes an _oompf _sound at the force of impact as she slams back into the bark of the tree, and they almost collapse in a heap to the floor but somehow manage to stay upright. Emily wraps her arms around her girlfriend as tightly as she can, presses kisses to her neck and shoulders and wherever else she can reach, breathing in her smell of tabacco and mint and home, sighing her relief into her lover's chest at finding Naomi safe.

"Emily?" Naomi asks, pulling away from her to look into her eyes. "Em, are you okay?"

Naomi once told her that she was the easiest person in the world to read, because everything she was feeling was written on her face, clear as day; Emily guesses that must be true, because she doesn't even have time to explain before Naomi pushes their lips together, slides her hot tongue into her mouth and her long fingers into Emily's hair; her own hands settle on Naomi's back near her hips, and the blonde visibly flinches and makes a noise in her throat that reminds Emily of why they are kissing in lieu of actual apologies in the first place.

Emily breaks away from Naomi, drops her hands to her sides and tries not to cry at how much her heart is hurting. "Tell me," Emily pleads, and she can taste the desperation of her words on her tongue as they leave her lips. "Please, Naoms, you have to tell me what's going on."

Naomi shifts her eyes – her _beautiful _blue eyes – away from Emily's and shakes her head, muttering, "Nothing's going on, Em, I don't know what you're –"

"Don't!" Emily cries, because it's such a fucking lie and they both know it, and she's too scared for Naomi to put up with her bullshit. "Don't tell me there's nothing going on, Naomi! You won't let me touch you, and when I do I end up hurting you because you're covered in bruises." Naomi freezes at that, and she looks so scared that Emily feels her heart break a little in her chest. "You can tell me, you have to tell me, okay? I'm so fucking worried, Naoms, okay, I don't – who's hurting you?"

Emily sees the way the pain in her voice hurts Naomi by how her eyes change, the way they squint together and grow wet and shiny with tears. Naomi rubs at them quickly, drags her hand through her hair and chokes out, "Look, Em, you don't understand –"

She breaks off when Emily's mahogany eyes widen in horror, and follows the redhead's line of sight.

(The cuts are still an angry red, snaking across the inside of her wrist in thick, long lines, bleeding into navy bruises the size of fifty pence pieces all along her forearm).

As Naomi looks at her helplessly with guilty eyes, everything clicks in Emily's head.

Naomi is hurting _herself_.

"No, Em, no, it's not – it's not what it looks like, I promise –" Naomi takes a step towards her and she backs away, unable to process what this means – Naomi, her beautiful and amazing Naomi, is _hurting_ herself, on purpose, and people only do that when they're upset or depressed –

– why didn't Emily notice sooner that Naomi was hurting, she thought they were happy and in love –

– oh God, is this her fault? Did she do or say something to Naomi that made her –

"Emily!" Naomi shouts, shaking her shoulders and snapping the redhead out of her thought process and into reality, and for the first time ever, Naomi's touch burns her skin unpleasantly and she slips out of her grasp, backing away from her slowly.

"Em, please, I can explain –" Naomi begs, but Emily doesn't want to know, not anymore; she's deathly afraid of what Naomi will tell her, that she's played a part in her girlfriend's self destruction. It makes her head hurt and her insides feel like someone's twisted them into knots, tied them around her heart and crushed all the air from her lungs.

(There is a moment where Emily looks into the blue eyes she loves so much and doesn't recognise the girl they belong to, and even though it's what she hates most about Naomi and it's a fucking awful thing to do, Emily finds herself turning her back on her girlfriend and running away from her, each heartwrenching cry of _Emily _that follows after her echoing in her head and pushing tears down her cheek.

Emily knows that Naomi probably thinks she's abandoned her and left her alone beneath the tree, but Emily is sure that if she were to fall to the grass beneath her feet she'd find broken pieces of Emily's heart).

;;

Jenna Fitch doesn't cry easily.

She hadn't cried at her mother's funeral, or when she'd given birth to her children; she hadn't cried when she'd broken her arm when she was seven, or when her father had walked out on her mother and brothers when she was fifteen. She is good at dealing with emotional pain, which is why she's so good at her job; as a nurse, she sees horrific things happen all the time, to innocent people who do nothing to deserve it, and she has to bottle up the pain these tragedies cause her so it doesn't distract her from saving others.

Jenna is sorting out patient charts when she sees her, the white blonde hair and sea-blue eyes of _that girl _unmistakeable under the bright lights of the hospital hallway. Jenna feels the familiar sensation of dislike spike in her chest at the sight of her entering the hospital, but it vanishes when she comes close enough for Jenna to see her clearly.

Naomi's eyes are wide and glassy like watch faces, her cheeks as pale as chalk and slick with tears. A string of bruises bloom on the skin of her left forearm in the shape of lily pads, large and severely discoloured, and she moves slowly, as though in pain. Naomi passes Jenna without glancing at her once, her face twisted with intense anguish as more tears slip from her eyes, and the Scottish nurse finds herself following her down the hallway silently, uneasiness pooling in her stomach.

Naomi walks into the Oncology ward, and Jenna's breath catches in her throat.

Oncology.

_Cancer._

Jenna watches from the doorway of Naomi's hospital room as Dr Arizona Robbins – the Head of PED's – sits in front of Naomi, a woman Jenna assumes to be her mother and that Stonem girl, and announces in a shaky voice: _I have the test results of your bone marrow aspiration, Naomi._

_Oh God, no, _Jenna prays, suddenly sick to her stomach. _Don't say it, please don't say it – _

_And? _Naomi's voice is tiny, a trembling whisper that barely qualifies as sound. She grips the hands of the people either side of her on the bed, knuckles white from the strain.

Dr Robbins' hands shake. _Your results show an accumulation of promyelocytes in your bone marrow and __leukocytosis in your peripheral blood – _

A sound unlike anything Jenna has ever heard before in her life is ripped from the lungs of Naomi's mother (Jenna clamps a hand over her mouth to prevent a similar noise escaping her own throat) before she collapses into herself and begins to sob uncontrollably; Effy's face disintegrates as she watches the woman's breakdown, face crumpling in understanding.

Naomi remains frozen, an island in a sea of chaos, face tightening in resignation as her world dissolves around her.

Jenna watches through blurry eyes as Naomi opens her mouth and confirms what Jenna has already figured out, but wishes with everything she has not to be true.

_The leukemia's back._


	7. Baby, did you forget to take your meds?

**Author's Note:** Part six Didn't think I'd get this out so soon, and it's kind of long again, but I suppose that's a good thing..? Anyway, tell me if this is dragging a little, because I can either go a longer plot twist route or a shorter one, depends if you guys want epic length fic or something shorter, so let me know. Thanks so much for all the reviews – I reply to them all, except anonymous ones, though I love them as well – and story alerts and all the favouriting, it's awesome, really, big love to you all LL=W.

The first time Naomi was told she had leukemia, she was two years old and had no clue what it meant.

Her mummy had started to cry, and her daddy's face screwed up so tight his face got wrinkly all over; she had looked to Arizona Robbins, the pretty lady with the white coat and super magic smile, big blue eyes wide with confusion. _Whassat mean? _She asked, head tilted to one side.

_You're sick, _Arizona said, still smiling. She reached out a hand, touched Naomi's tiny palm. _But it's okay, you don't have to be scared. I'm going to make you better._

;;

The second time, Naomi was seven and had been given the all clear just three weeks prior.

_No! _Her mummy had screamed at Arizona, as she paced the tiny hospital room, whilst her daddy held her in his lap and kissed the back of her head even as she felt the ends of her hair get wet with his tears. _You said she was fine, that she'd been in remission for long enough and she was fine! It's a mistake, it has to be – do more tests, please, she can't –_

_Gina, _her daddy pleaded, in the tiniest voice Naomi had ever heard. _Please, stop._

She didn't, so Naomi slid down her daddy's legs and shuffled over to her mummy, tugged at the bottom of her red shirt (Naomi's favourite; it always smelled like lilies). Her mummy crouched down in front of her and cradled her cheek in her hand; Naomi's hips and back still really hurt from all the needles, and she was really scared because last time she was in hospital everything hurt and she was really sick and it was horrible and she hated it, but she didn't say anything, because her mummy was upset enough. Instead, she pressed her little palm against her mummy's face, smiled a tiny smile. _It's okay, mummy. I'll be strong again, I promise. Please don't cry._

(She only cried harder).

;;

The third time, Naomi was twelve and old enough to know that she was probably going to die. (No one got this many chances at a life that was on thin ice from the offset).

She'd watched with dry eyes as her mother fell to the floor beside her bed, and Arizona had to be the one to take her into her arms; her father had his head in his hands and his jaw clenched so tightly Naomi could hear his teeth grinding.

She listed the things she knew about leukemia in her head: the treatment made her sicker than she believed the cancer ever could, made her hair fall out and grow back coarser, thicker. It made her parents have vicious fights about what was best for her, when what was best for her was for them to shut the fuck up and be there for her because she was fucking dying for Christ's sake. It would trap her inside a hospital for weeks and months whilst other kids her age tried alcohol at parties and had relationships and fun, whilst she fought for her life.

Naomi looked up from where she had been staring at her wrists – contemplating falling back on old habits and breaking the skin there just to end it all faster – in time to see her dad kick his chair out from underneath him and storm towards the door. He turned to face her, and the look he wore made her feel like such a fucking failure she forgot how to breathe. He shook his head, punched his fist through the glass window of her hospital room and fled.

It was the last time Naomi ever saw him.

;;

The fourth time, Naomi is seventeen and all she can think is _Emily._

;;

Arizona is telling her they need to begin treatment right away, that she's already presenting with blasts and her white cell count is high and that chromosomes fifteen and seventeen have translocated –

"So basically I'm fucked."

Naomi can feel Gina looking at her like she's just shot a puppy, and Effy's thumb freezes where it had been drawing circles on the back of Naomi's hand, but Naomi keeps her eyes trained on Arizona, daring – _begging _– the doctor to contradict her.

"No," she states firmly, striding across the floor to sit on the end of her bed, "no, Naomi. You are not fucked." The blonde flinches at the obscenity, because it sounds all wrong coming from Arizona's mouth, and the bitter, mocking tone in which she says it tells Naomi how upset she is. "Your prognosis isn't good, but it's been a whole lot worse before, and you've still pulled through. With immediate treatment, you have a good chance of remission – "

"What if I don't want treatment?"

In the silence that follows, Naomi hears the word _death _echo through the room and bounce off the walls, the windows, whisper in the ears of everyone around her. She contemplates it for a second, what refusing medical help would mean: she would die, yes, but it would be months from now, a year maybe, and she could spend that time with Emily, in Mexico perhaps, travelling the world and building a life together, no matter how short lived it may be. No hospitals, or medecine, or waiting for death in a foreign place surrounded by strangers – just living the rest of her life with the people she loves, doing the things she's always wanted to do. It's a scary thought, the certainty of death, but it isn't anywhere near as terrifying as spending what's left of her life drained of energy from chemotherapy, lying helpless and immobilised in a hospital bed, frail and weak, her loved ones watching on as she fades away.

Maybe it's time to let go.

"Don't be silly, love. You need to get treatment, you need to get better. We talked about this, you're strong enough to fight the cancer."

"I'm tired of fighting."

Naomi closes her eyes and falls back onto her pillows, lets out a long breath. She conjures an image of Emily in her mind, the best thing that's ever happened to her, but it's the Emily that deserted her merely minutes ago in the park opposite the hospital, broken because she thinks Naomi hates her life. But the reality is so much worse than what Emily believes to be true, and Naomi cannot bear to think what it would do to her if she knew; she could walk away, go back and beg Emily to forgive her, tell her she was just messing around, and Emily wouldn't have to know about the leukemia until Naomi died; in those months inbetween, they could be happy.

(Naomi remembers with far more clarity than she'd like the expression of painful horror that graced Emily's features, and ponders the horrifying thought that Emily might not forgive her. If she can't, well; Naomi can see no point in fighting for her life if the most important thing in it is no longer there).

Whichever way she looks at it, death would be a blessing.

"Listen to me," Arizona says, with a steel in her voice that makes Naomi open her eyes to see the determination on the blonde doctor's face. "I know you're tired. I am too. But we've been fighting against this for fifteen years now, Naomi, and we've won every single time. You have been strong, and resilient – you have never given up, not once. And now is not the time to start." Arizona shifts closer to Naomi on the bed, takes her free hand gently, like she's scared she'll break her. "So you have to keep trying, okay? This is your life, and I am not going to stand by and watch you let leukemia ruin it. I can't believe you'd even think of being that selfish."

_Selfish. _Everything Naomi's been doing up until now has been to spare everyone else around her pain; it's why she'd held her tongue as Emily ran from her, the truth sticking in her throat. "I'm not being selfish, I – "

"Yes you are, Naomi! I can't live without you, I can't, you're all I have left! This isn't just your life we're talking about here – it's mine too."

Naomi looks her mother dead in the eye. "You're not the one who has to hurt twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until God knows when trying to beat this shit, which obviously cannot be beaten because it's back again, for the fourth fucking time! I do not want to spend the next two years or however long slowly killing myself with medecine that doesn't fucking work only to have to do it all over again eventually anyway. I'd rather be dead."

"This could be the last time, love, it might not come back – "

"It always comes back!" Naomi's voice is loud, cracking around her words as her hands curl into fists in her bedsheets. She's just so tired. "I can't do it, okay? I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, but I just can't."

And she's crying again, because everyone else is, and it seems fitting, and Naomi knows she's let everyone down; but a part of her is warming at the thought that she won't have to fight like she was scared to, that this nightmare is coming to end. But then she thinks of Emily – because she rarely thinks of anything else – and everything goes cold inside her.

And because Effy is too fucking intuitive for her own good, she closes a hand around Naomi's wrist and says, "You can't just leave her, Naoms."

Effy looks so small and scared and it's so reminiscent of Emily that Naomi nearly kisses her to wipe the look off her face, before she checks herself and remembers this is her best friend, and Emily's not hers to kiss anymore anyway; Effy is waiting for an answer, fingertips unsteady over her pulse point, but the only one Naomi has is one she can't voice, because the words refuse to roll off her tongue.

_No, Eff, you've got it all wrong. Emily left me._

;;

She's smoking on some pensioner's wall when Cook finds her.

"Emilio! What's up muff muncher?"

It's because he looks genuinely concerned, brows furrowed and head tilted to the side, that Emily breaks down into tears for the second time that day.

"Hey, shhh, you're alright Red, Cookie's got you," Cook croons into her hair as he gathers her into his arms, standing between her legs and crouching down to her level, in what must be a very uncomfortable position, and even though Emily doesn't really like Cook at all, she clutches at his shoulders and cries into his shirt, because he's there and he's being lovely and maybe she was wrong about him.

"What's wrong, babe? Tell Cookie all about it."

Emily is crying too hard to get words out, and her cigarette is burning her fingers where they're curled into Cook's polo shirt, and the cologne he's wearing makes her feel a little sick because it's nothing like how Naomi smells and fuck, Naomi –

As if on cue, Cook asks if she and blondie have had a tizzy.

Yes, because I just found out she's cutting and injuring herself and instead of being there for her, I left her sobbing in the park because I'm a fucking coward and I didn't want to hear her say it's all my fault.

Emily doesn't tell Cook this of course, because she doubts Naomi would want him to know, and she's nothing if not loyal (that's all it is, loyalty; it's nothing to do with not wanting to see the look of disgust in Cook's eyes when he realises it's her that's to blame and she's a totally shit person for abandoning Naomi when she needs her the most).

Instead, she lifts her head from his chest, and says, "I'm scared, Cook. I pushed her into this, with me, because I thought she wanted it and was just too fucking stubborn to admit it, but what if she doesn't want it? What if she doesn't want me, and now she's stuck and unhappy and regretting everything – "

Emily breaks off, voice too thick with tears to be decipherable, and sucks her lips in to try and stop the crying, but she can't – all she can think about is Naomi and the red lines tracking across her wrist, like ink drawn on her skin; Emily pictures her slumped on the floor, holding something sharp and bleeding everywhere and she nearly vomits all over Cook's shoes. How could she have missed this? Where was she when Naomi was doing all these horrible things to herself?

(Was it because of her?)

"You listen to me, Red," Cook interrupts, holding her face in his large, rough hands and brushing tears off her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. "I dunno what's got you all teary and shit, but you're worryin' for nothin', babe, trust. Blondie don't do nothin' she don't want to, you can't force that bird into anythin', she's proper stubborn, you're right about that. And she fuckin' loves you, Emily, sure as shit; yous are meant for each other, yeah, and she fuckin' knows it. She has to, otherwise there's no way she woulda turned down a willy waggle with yours truly."

And he smirks at her then, tongue caught between his teeth, and Emily laughs at him; she gets it then, why Naomi likes Cook so much, why they're so close; they're a lot alike, and Cook can be pretty sweet and caring when he's not being an arse.

But – well, Cook may be nice, but he's not all that bright, and Emily's not entirely convinced he's right. It's the many years of being made to feel worthless that's done it, made her doubt people's sincerety towards her – she's used to feeling like a spare part, something people use when needed and then discard without a second thought once they're done, and then she's forgotten. Maybe Naomi is done now, wants nothing more to do with her, resents Emily's presence in her life so much she has to cut herself to stand it.

(But then their summer together filters through Emily's mind like sunlight through glass, spilling wonderful memories onto the canvas of her brain, and she's remembering; the golden colour Naomi's hair glowed beneath the sunset's reds and oranges as they made love at the lake, the warm colour her eyes turned whenever Emily said _I love you_, how she'd stroke the back of Emily's hand so gently before they fell asleep together and whisper _Goodnight, Emily _into her neck, the skin always tingling afterward, and Emily hates to think that was all a lie, deems it impossible, even, for Naomi to have been lying all this while, knows that she's a better person than that.

Cook's face is still so close to hers, and Emily notices his eyes are similar to Naomi's, that same sort of icy blue, and Emily remembers her earlier thought about semblances. It goes deeper than blue eyes and hard demeanours. They both built walls that grew stronger as broken homes collapsed brick-by-brick into rubble around them, absent fathers and difficult childhoods sharpening their edges to stop anyone getting close enough to hurt. Naomi's life has been anything but easy, and maybe it's this, this darkness from her past that's casting shadows and making Naomi lash out (at herself, because the person she should be taking it out on abandoned her).

And if it is that, the abandonment, then Emily's just made things a million times fucking worse).

"Go find her," Cook commands, breaking into her guilty thoughts, straightening up and ruffling her hair. "Go find blondie, apologise for whatever shit went down, then shag her senseless and film it so I can watch, since I've been of such great help in getting you birds together again."

Emily's smiling as she tells him to fuck off, and he laughs uproariously like it's the funniest thing he's ever heard. He scuffs his trainers on the pavement, sobers up a little bit and looks at her with sad eyes. "You've gotta fix it, Red. There's nothin' worse than lettin' the girl you love go."

Cook smiles at her tightly, and Emily feels sympathy clench around her heart, because Cook really loves Effy, and she can't imagine how awful it feels to know he can never have her; it strengthens her resolve to find Naomi and help her, give her a chance to explain and let her know that they can face this together.

If nothing else, she has to make sure Naomi knows she loves her.

"Thank you, Cook." She means it.

"You're welcome, Emily." He touches her shoulder before walking away, hands in his pockets, and Emily thinks that means that he meant it, too.

;;

It catches her off-guard, when she sees them.

She's aimlessly wandering the hospital halls, counting the number of cancer patients in the Oncology ward – eighteen, which is less than the last time she was diagnosed; Naomi wonders if it means less people have cancer these days or if the ones who had it before are now dead – because she had to get out of her room, couldn't stand the way her mum and Effy had been fucking looking at her, because she feels guilty enough, thank you very much, and they refused to discharge her without getting a psych consult first, so walking it is.

They're leaning against the nurse's station, heads close together, talking quietly. Arizona looks exhausted, like she could fall asleep where she stands, and the attractive latina beside her – Dr. Calliope Torres, an orthopedic surgeon – has a hand on her arm, fingers stroking lazy circles on the blonde's skin. Arizona looks ready to cry, is shaking her head at what Callie is saying – it's the same expression of pain her doctor had worn when she'd refused treatment earlier, and the guilt punches Naomi hard in the gut, stops her heart in her chest with its intensity. Arizona pushes away from the station in an attempt to leave, but Callie grabs her arm and crushes the blonde to her chest, captures her lips in a kiss.

Naomi knows that Arizona is a lesbian, and has been all her life, and she has met Callie many times before during her visits to the hospital – she has seen them together, as a couple, seen them hold hands and kiss and comfort each other, walk out of on call rooms red-faced and flustered, has heard them tell the other I love you. But never before has seeing them do these things made her feel like crying so hard her whole body aches, made her heart beat so hard against her ribs she feels the bones strain against her skin, made her want to scream until her throat is so raw no more sound can come out, but this time, this time she wants to do all of those things, because it's not fucking fair. That will never be her and Emily – they will never grow up together or have the chance to get married and have kids or love each other for years and years, because Naomi is _dying, _she's fucking dying, and there's no time for them to just be in love, because very soon, Naomi will be dead.

_Maybe not. Not if you stop being such a stupid cunt and let the doctors help you._

But _no, _Naomi doesn't want to, because it wouldn't work anyway, it never has, and the disappointment she'd feel at knowing she'd tried and failed would rip her apart, to know that all the fighting and suffering had been for nothing; what was a few extra years, if she would be in the same place again at the end of them anyway? A few more years with Emily, however, is a different matter entirely, but _no. Fucking hell, just no._

They catch her staring at them when they break apart, and Naomi realises she looks like an enormous pervy dyke, but the way their faces soften when they see the look she's wearing makes Naomi think that they get it, that they understand. She knows that Arizona has seen the green in her eyes, the envy stitched into her facial expression, and has no doubt that she'll work the angle, use it to convince her into staying and getting treatment.

Naomi is the only one who has stopped fighting, and she has never felt so alone in her entire life.

;;

Naomi has lost her phone, or it's at her house or in her hospital room, or fuck, she doesn't know and doesn't care, really, so she uses one of the hospital's payphones, borrows some change off a kind old lady in the waiting room. Her fingers shake as she dials, pressing a button on every third thud of her heart as it pounds slowly in her chest, entering a number she has called many times late at night on the rare occasions they were apart, or every day for two weeks when Emily had been on holiday in France. She knows it by heart, as she does everything about Emily.

She picks up on the fourth ring and it's both too quick and too slow all at once.

"Emily," she breathes, and Naomi hates the uncertainty and desperation in her voice, hates that Emily can do this to her. "God, Em, I'm sorry, I just…"

Emily is saying soothing words down the line, whispering her name over and over, and she sounds relieved and incredibly worried at the same time, and Naomi wraps the phone's wire tightly around her wrist, feels her heart constrict a little more with each twist of the cord and utterance of her name.

"Em, I need, I need to tell you, you have to know." She's making no sense, has no fucking clue why she even called except that she needs to hear Emily's voice, needs to know she won't hate her for not trying to fight harder, for her life, for them, for Emily. But she can't tell her about the cancer, she just can't, so it won't make any sense to Emily, who is thinking all the wrong things and Naomi is letting her.

"Naoms? What do I need to know? Listen, I'm sorry, about before, I shouldn't have left, but I didn't know what to do – I mean, God, Naomi, I had no idea – "

"It's not your fault, Em, none of this – none of this is because of you. I just, I'm weak Emily, and I'm so tired, and I need you to know that no matter what happens, I love you, okay? I really fucking love you, and this, this doesn't change that, because nothing will ever change that. You know, right? You have to know how much I love you."

Naomi hears Emily suck in a deep breath, feels the static from the shitty connection crackle against her ear. "I know."

"Don't forget it though."

"I won't – I couldn't. And I love you too, so much, and I'll never stop, I'll never stop loving you," and they're both crying now, and Naomi's hand is turning purple where the telephone wire is wound around her wrist, cutting off the blood circulation. "Whatever this is, whatever is making you do what you're doing, I'll still love you, I will always love you."

Naomi drops the receiver then, watches it fall from her shaking hand, the wire unravelling from around her wrist and blood rushing through the veins there and warming her fingers. She can still hear Emily crying, and it hurts so much, because they are talking about different things and Emily is worrying for all the wrong reasons, and Naomi is lying to her, but she cannot bring herself to tell her the truth – Naomi loves Emily, and that is the only truth worth sharing.

"You love her."

Naomi freezes. She knows that voice.

"I had this idea in my head that you were corrupting her, that she wanted to be rebellious, and you were more than happy to lead her astray. But that's not true. You love her, and she loves you."

Naomi turns around painfully slowly, fingers twisted together in prayer that it's not what she thinks. But then, Jenna Fitch is about a metre in front of her, wearing dark blue scrubs and an ID card that says she's a nurse at this hospital and _fuck fuck FUCK – _

"She loves you, and this is going to break her, Naomi." And she sounds so fucking sad, and she's looking at Naomi with such familiar brown eyes, and it sounds like she actually cares – but most importantly, she knows, Emily's mum knows, _how the fuck does she know?_

"I don't know what you're talking about," and it's completely pointless and futile because she's wearing a hospital gown and she's covered in so many bruises about a third of her skin is blue, but she has to try because this is Emily's mum and _Jesus fucking Christ._

"I heard you talking to Dr. Robbins, and I've read your file – acute promyelocytic leukemia," Jenna says, and it's hearing it out loud, the official diagnosis, so harsh and brutal and like ice being pressed into her skin that finally breaks her.

"Don't tell Emily, please, she doesn't know. I can't tell her," she rushes out, sounding so small and pathetic she's surprised Jenna even hears her. She takes a step towards Jenna, grips her arm – fucking foolish really, because this woman hates her, but Naomi is really desperate and it feels like the world disappearing beneath her and she needs some fucking stability. "Please, Mrs Fitch, I know you hate me, but you love Emily, and you don't want her to get hurt. This would hurt her, so fucking much, and I don't want that, that's the last thing I want, so please. Please don't tell Emily."

Jenna looks at her in a way she never has before, the disdain and resentment in her eyes replaced with something that inflates Naomi's lungs with too much air, makes her think of Emily and how easily she hurts. Jenna puts a hand on Naomi's arm in turn, opens and closes her mouth. "It's already hurting her. She knows something isn't right." She pauses, an apology in her eyes. "Naomi, she'll never forgive you if you don't tell her, if the next time she sees you, you're dead."

And then Naomi is in pieces, and she doesn't think she'll ever be whole again.


	8. Giving up the ghost

**Author's Note:** Pfffffft, this was by far the hardest chapter to write, and undoubtedly the one I am the least unsure about. I'm pretty sure it's the one you have all been waiting for, so I really hope I've done it justice. Thank you all so much for the reads, reviews, story alerts and favourites and such things, they make me unbelievably happy – 27 reviews for the last chapter…you guys are AWESOME. I love you LL=W.

;;

Things are quickly spinning out of control.

Emily doesn't know how they ended up here: on opposite sides of a telephone wire with hurt and confusion and the possibility of an ending hanging in the space between them. Emily doesn't understand why she isn't by Naomi's side, holding her tightly and pressing kisses to all her self inflicted wounds in the naïve hope that they will sew themselves shut, be erased from Naomi's skin and her life altogether.

Emily wants to help, wants to fix things, fix Naomi and herself, by proxy (because when Naomi is hurting, so is she).

There is a lightness in her chest that feels a lot like hope when she hears Naomi's voice filter delicately into her ear, every _I love you _a suture that stitches her heart back together and makes her think _yes, we can do this. _

But, then.

Emily hears a voice that – these days – only ever wraps around words that are hurtful, degrading, full of a disappointment that strikes her somewhere low in her gut with such sudden force Emily wishes nothing had been said at all.

It is like hearing sound through glass, or the heaviness of water, and the words blur together in a mess of wavelengths so that Emily cannot make them out. She hears Naomi cry out, a crotchet note that splits something inside her; she imagines the wound bleeding freely even as the sound is muffled, into what she pictures to be her mother's shoulder.

(She's never going to like me, you know, Naomi had said, stretched out on the warm grass of Emily's garden, fingers playing with the hem of her bikini bottoms as she avoided Emily's eye. I'm not good enough for you.

Emily had sat up, shocked, reached for Naomi's hand where it lay beside her. You are, she declared, with all the conviction she felt in her heart, you are more than enough. She'll come around, eventually.

It wasn't a lie, exactly, but neither was it truth.

Emily took in the way the strong afternoon sun made Naomi's skin glow brightly like dove feathers – remaining steadfastly pale even in the heat of summer – half her face cast in shadow where her head was turned towards Emily, her blue eyes spotlight-bright and glowing, and she completely failed to understand how anyone could not be in love with this girl.

Emily had kissed Naomi then, because she'd never been able to do anything else. It was soft, slow, the touch of Emily's hand against Naomi's cheek feather light.

A sharp intake of breath from a couple of yards away had them breaking apart, Jenna's shadow as she towered above them casting Naomi into darkness, the sudden cold raising hairs on her skin. You're back early, Emily had said, the way her hand tightened around Naomi's fingers belying the strength in her voice.

Jenna's face had twisted with contempt, hard lines around her mouth like parentheses, just barely stopping venom from spewing out. Naomi had to avert her eyes, skin pricking with heat at the force of such disdain.

The fight had started, explosively, casualties all over the place, and Emily knew then – without a doubt – that she had lied).

Now, her mother's voice is soft like falling snow; Naomi's cries die down with every syllable, until the line goes dead and silence blankets Emily's room.

_What could possibly have happened, _Emily thinks, heart beating the rhythm of a grandfather clock against her ribs, _to make her show compassion towards Naomi?_

Emily thinks that it must have been something monumentous, groundbreaking.

A miracle.

Except.

Emily remembers where her mother is right now, where Naomi must be, too, and within seconds she is flying out of her front door and pounding the pavement, a blur of movement under the dying sun.

;;

From her spot on the floor leant up against the wall by the pay phone, Naomi is facing the massive glass entrance doors to the hospital, and she has a brilliant view of the world outside. It's late in the day, and the sun is sinking slowly behind the enormous buildings silhouetted against the sky, which is burning with reds and yellows, like a thousand fireworks have exploded along the horizon and their colours have been frozen in place. It is astonishlingly beautiful, so naturally, it reminds Naomi of Emily.

Jenna is silent beside her, her hands clasped together tightly in her lap, but Naomi can hear what she is thinking. She doesn't understand why Naomi can't bring herself to tell Emily, thinks it's cruel and unfair and just fucking awful. It is, and Naomi knows this, and would be absolutely furious if it were the other way around, if Emily was dying and didn't bother to tell her.

But Naomi doesn't want Emily to remember her like this; sick and weak, beaten down by her own body, a disease she is no longer strong enough to fight. Naomi doesn't want their days to be numbered, for all her time with Emily to be fraught with fear and the thought that each passing second brings her closer to death.

Emily would try to convince her to have treatment, and would hate her for refusing it, but that would be even worse; letting Emily see her be completely destroyed by chemotherapy, broken down and defeated by drugs Naomi doesn't think her body can handle for a fourth time, giving the redhead hope that she can survive, all for it to go wrong and kill her in the end anyway.

So no. That is not how Emily will remember her. Naomi will get out of hospital and go to be with her for however long she has left.

Emily never has to know.

;;

When Naomi returns to her hospital room a half hour later, she finds a group of doctors waiting to ambush her.

Naomi pauses inside the doorway, Jenna's arm around her shoulders, lets her eyes flicker over their determined faces as they stare defiantly her way. "You have got to be fucking kidding me."

Arizona steps forward, hands clasped behind her back. "Stop swearing. The tiny humans might hear you." She gestures behind her. "I've assembled the troops to make you see sense."

Naomi rolls her eyes – praying to God no one can tell she's been crying – and ambles into the room and onto her bed, pulling Effy up from where she's sat in a chair beside it. Naomi is grateful that Effy says nothing, just curls an arm around her shoulders and strokes her hair absently; she's exhausted, feeling incredibly weak, and speaking to Emily has started an aching inside her gut, her chest, her throat, and it tastes a lot like guilt on the back of her tongue. "Your concern is touching, really." Naomi's words are dripping sarcasm. "But I already told you, I'm leaving – I'll do the fucking psych consult, but then I'm out of here."

"That's really not a good idea," Callie begins, standing at Arizona's side, "without treatment – "

Naomi cuts in before Callie can finish, because hearing it out loud might kill hear. "Look, I get that you care, but I've made up my mind for fuck's sake. Don't you people have lives to save?"

"Yes," declares Meredith Grey, one of the interns, raising her eyebrows pointedly. "We do."

Naomi grimaces, because really, she walked right into that. "You have other patients that you should be helping, and who bloody want your help. I don't. So please, just fucking leave me alone."

It's getting incredibly difficult to keep this mask of indifference in place, to act like she doesn't care and that she's fine with dying, because these people – these wonderful, amazing people who she's known since she was a child and who have fought to do everything they can for her for almost all of her life – look so fucking disappointed in her that Naomi almost cracks.

Almost.

"You have acute promyelocytic leukemia, and it's in the advanced stages," states another intern, Cristina Yang, when the silence stretches on a little too long. "If you leave, you'll be back again in a few weeks due to haemorrhaging. And then you'll probably die."

"Yang!" yells Bailey, the Chief Resident, glaring at the asian woman. "A little patient sensitivity please!" Bailey locks eyes with Naomi, who tries very hard to pretend her pulse isn't fluttering like dragonfly wings beneath her skin at Cristina's words, which feel like bullets punching holes in her organs. "She's not wrong, though," Bailey adds sadly, eyes soft and shiny like new pennies.

Gina sighs shakily from her place at Naomi's bedside, stares her daughter down with an expression that is half angry, half pleading, and completely heartbroken. "Please, love. You have to try." Her voice is breaking on every word, and Naomi can almost feel how her mother is tearing at the seams. "All those other times before, when you were younger, and the prognosis was fucking awful, we didn't think you'd make it – but you did. You've had an extra fifteen years, got to live a life that I thought would be cut short before I got the chance to know you. But I've seen you grow up, and you've made my life pretty fucking wonderful, even when you were being a little shit. And I'm not ready for you to go yet," Gina whispers, wiping her eyes with her sleeves, and Naomi feels tears of her own spill down her cheeks. "I know it's selfish of me to want to keep you here, when you don't want to be – although I don't believe that for a second – but I don't care. I don't fucking care, because I can't let you go."

Naomi swallows hard, forces everything she wants to promise to her mum back down her throat and into her lungs, breathes it all out as air; it fucking burns as she does it, but Naomi can't tell her mum she'll fight, no matter how much she wants to, because when she fails it'll just hurt that little bit more. Naomi takes a deep breath. "I'm sorry," she says, because she really fucking is, and there's a stabbing pain between her ribs when Gina's face falls. "I just can't."

That's when it hits her, with a finality that threatens to break her bones with the force of its impact.

She is going to die.

;;

The second the lights turn amber, Emily guns the moped and speeds off along the tarmac at least ten miles above the speed limit; she is sorely tempted to run red lights, crash into the backs of cars, because although it's stupidly dangerous and she'd probably get herself killed, at least an ambulance would get her to hospital faster.

Emily feels overwhelmed with blind panic, trying desperately to think of perfectly normal reasons why Naomi would be in the hospital: a broken bone, a sick relative, a campaign for fairer wages for nurses, volunteering to help out on the kid's ward.

Except.

Naomi has been cutting herself, badly, and the way she was talking on the phone sounded a lot like goodbye.

Emily has tried to avoid thinking about it, but the thought explodes in her head with such force that she nearly falls off the moped because she's shaking so hard.

Naomi might have tried to kill herself.

Emily chokes out a sob and floors the accelerator to a concerto of blaring horns and angry voices.

Then she starts praying.

;;

"What?"

Naomi snaps her head towards Jenna, who she had forgotten was even in the room. She looks furious, her dark eyes heated and narrowed near to slits. "You're not getting treatment?"

_Oh fuck._

"Nurse Fitch? Aren't you supposed to be working in the pit today?"

"Fitch?" chorus Effy and Gina.

_Double fuck._

"Yes, Fitch. She's Emily's mum."

Gina looks both shocked and angry – she's been witness to a good few of Emily's breakdowns over her mother's intolerance, and in her frustrated state is more than likely to lash out – and Naomi shakes her head at her firmly, internally praying she doesn't say anything. Effy looks guilty, her eyes wide and scared, and Naomi thinks, _oh right, she smashed Katie's head in with a rock._

Brilliant.

"So, let me get this straight," Jenna begins angrily, ignoring everything that's just been said and advancing further into the room. "Not only are you not telling Emily you have leukemia, you are also going to just let it kill you?"

Naomi doesn't have an answer for that, because the truth is she's being a cunt and she knows it.

"What the hell are you playing at?" Jenna shouts, making everyone in the room jump. "Do you have any idea what it would do to Emily if you died? Do you even care?"

"Of course I fucking care!" Naomi snaps, sitting up in bed to face her properly, suddenly blinded with rage, because the only reason she's doing any of this is because of how much she loves Emily.

"Nurse Fitch!" cries Bailey, stalking towards her, looking vaguely terrifying despite what a small woman she is, "you do not talk to the patient like that, you understand me? Now go, you have work to do, and you have no business being here!"

Jenna ignores her. "I'm not leaving."

"Excuse me – "

"I know this patient, Dr Bailey." Naomi has never found the Scottish accent more scary. "She knows my daughters, Katie and Emily. Neither of them are aware that she's here, that she's sick, or that she's going to throw away her life without fighting to keep it." Jenna's eyes are so much like Emily's that it hurts Naomi to look into them, but she can't stop herself. "It would destroy them if she died."

"Shut up," Naomi snarls, shaking off the hand Effy places on her shoulder to try and calm her. "Why do you even give a fuck? You hate me, remember? You hate that I'm with Emily, that I 'made her gay' – you told me to stop putting ideas in her head and demanded that I disappear. Well this is me disappearing!" And fuck, she's crying again, but she's far too tired and angry to care. "So you can be happy now, okay? I'll be dead and unable to corrupt her any longer, just like you always fucking wanted."

Shame colours Jenna's cheeks cherry red, and Callie and Arizona are looking at her in a way that makes Naomi painfully regret everything she's just said. "I never wanted you to die, Naomi," Jenna fires back, voice tight and gravelly as she bites back tears. "What I did was wrong and selfish. But so is what you're doing now. Emily loves you and she fought so hard to be with you. All of that was for nothing, if you just give up now. If you love her, you need to fight for her."

"Don't," Naomi cries, all the fight draining from her suddenly and leaving her empty, save for the guilt she can feel in every inch of her skin. "Please just don't." She rubs at her face with her hands, pressing her fingers hard into her temples to try and get her brain to shut the fuck up. "I love her, I do, so fucking much. I just – I don't want her to see me like this. I don't want her to realise what a fucking failure I am."

_Because she'll leave. Just like he did._

And that's what this is all about, Naomi knows, keeping this secret from Emily; her father left her to fight without him, abandoned her when she needed him the most. He let the leukemia define her and couldn't look past it to see the scared little girl underneath, who he saw as imperfect, flawed, a disappointment who would never meet his expectations of the perfect daughter. She failed him, and he stopped loving her.

(It was him that had spotted the bruise that signalled her third relapse. His fingers had frozen over the skin of her arm as she cuddled into his side on a cold winter's evening, wrapped up together in an armchair in front of the fire.

What did you do, poppet? He'd asked, voice so tight around the words they sounded strangled, muted.

Naomi swallowed, unable to tear her eyes from the ugly purple mark. I don't know, dad. His grip on her tightened until it was almost painful. I don't remember.

Silence stretched between them for long minutes, thickening the air. It's okay, Naomi. Her father's smile was fake, forced. It's probably nothing.

It wasn't, and in the battle that followed, Naomi suffered losses too heavy for her to fathom).

Naomi couldn't stand to have Emily look at her the way he had done, like she's damaged and broken, not worth hanging around for; losing Emily like that is far more horrifying than leukemia ever could be.

Naomi feels fingers ghost over the skin of her left arm, tracing the bruises and the cuts with the lightest touch (it burns like it did the first time). She turns her head to the side to face Gina, and finds understanding glistening in her eyes.

"Emily's not your father, Naomi. You know that."

_No, _Naomi thinks, staring at the blue in her skin as her throat tightens. _No,_ _I don't._

;;

Emily ditches her moped somewhere in the parking lot and races towards the hospital's doors, a stitch weaving its way between her ribs; she arrives at the reception desk with her lungs burning from lack of oxygen, and somehow manages through panting breaths to ask if Naomi Campbell has been admitted.

"Are you family?" the receptionist asks.

Emily says yes without hesitating, because it's one of the few truths she's still sure of.

"Room 314, on the third floor."

"Thank you," Emily replies, even as her heart is sinking into her stomach, because Naomi is here, and she's hurt, and Emily is fucking terrified about what she has done to herself.

Emily runs up glass staircases and along corridors, her heartbeat a gallopping riff in her ears, crossing her fingers and wishing with everything she has that she's not too late.

;;

The second Emily sees her, sees her chest rising and falling as she inhales and exhales oxygen from her lungs, Emily can do nothing but kiss Naomi until they're both breathless.

Emily doesn't care that there are half a dozen other people in the room, including her mother, nor does she care that the way she is straddling Naomi's hips is entirely inappropriate. The only thing that matters is the way Naomi's lips feel against hers, the soft give of them beneath her tongue. She tangles her hands in blonde hair, sighs against her girlfriend's mouth when she feels hands stroking the small of her back, and buries her head in Naomi's neck when they break apart.

"You're okay," she chokes out, pressing light kisses to Naomi's shoulder, which is slippery with her tears. Naomi feels like something is caught on her heart, and in trying to tug itself free the muscle will be ripped from her chest, because no, she is not okay. Far fucking from it.

Emily sits back further on her legs, pulls Naomi's hands in front of her and interlocks their fingers; she visibly sighs with relief upon discovering that there are no bandages on her wrists, no bloody cuts or open wounds. "I thought you'd tried to hurt yourself," she whispers, not meeting the blonde's eyes. "The things you were saying on the phone, it sounded like – Christ."

Naomi feels like an enormous cunt then, because Emily thought she had tried to commit suicide, probably convinced it was somehow her fault, all because Naomi is a fucking lying coward who doesn't deserve Emily at all.

Naomi hates herself for it, but she's still desperately searching for a lie she can tell to keep this a secret from Emily, because telling her the truth is only going to destroy them both.

"I heard you talking to mum, and figured you must be here. I freaked the fuck out – I didn't know what to think. I was terrified that something had happened to you." Emily's eyes crease at the corners, her brow furrowing as she asks for an answer Naomi would do anything not to give. "Why are you here?"

Naomi opens and closes her mouth, feels the muscles in her throat contract and relax as she tries to force out words. _Fuck, fuck, fuck – _

"Just tell her the truth, Naomi."

Emily's glare towards her mother is vicious. "Stay out of this."

Effy stands suddenly, attracts everyone's attention, and looks directly at Naomi as she speaks. "We'll be outside if you need us." She gently touches her lips to Naomi's cheek and squeezes Emily's shoulder, before pointedly locking eyes with everyone in the room and exiting through the door, waiting for them to follow.

Jenna hesitates as the others file out obediently, the desire to be there for her daughter when her world is torn to shreds around her overwhelmingly strong. Gina shuffles towards her, the picture of a broken woman with her red and lifeless eyes, and there is a moment of implicit understanding between them – they cannot save their children from this, for they have grown up and no longer look to them for guidance. Naomi and Emily must take care of each other.

Finally they are alone, and Emily's heart is being tightly squeezed by all the pressure that's built up in her chest from not knowing what the fuck is wrong with Naomi, and then she's crying and begging her to just fucking tell her already. "Whatever it is, we'll get through it together, Naoms." Emily pushes their foreheads together, feels herself cry a little harder when Naomi's eyelashes flutter against the swell of her cheek. "I'm here."

_Yes, you are. But for how long?_

"Emily," Naomi murmurs, sliding her arms around her waist and pulling her impossibly closer, savouring the feel of her body flush against her own, the softness of her skin and the smell of her hair, just in case this is her last chance to do so. "Do you remember the first time we kissed?"

Emily sighs shakily. _How could I forget? _She doesn't trust her voice not to crack around her words, so she simply nods slowly, wondering what this has to do with anything.

(It had been bitterly cold that night, the sting of the air a lovely respite from the heat of a hundred or so drunk teenagers pressed close together in the house, and the dewy grass had cooled the backs of Emily's thighs as she'd sunk to the earth next to Naomi, offered her a bottle of vodka she'd stolen from the kitchen.

(The sneaky glances and shared smiles across classrooms and corridors had gone on long enough, and Emily was just about bursting with the desire to make something happen).

Thanks, Naomi smiled as she took a long pull from the bottle, her belly burning pleasantly when the alcohol settled in her stomach. She glanced at Emily to pass the spirit back, found her smiling shyly and much closer than she was expecting; her eyes were fire bright, and Naomi felt her skin heat up at Emily's proximity.

I've never seen you at one of these parties before, Emily observed, sipping gently at the drink. At Naomi's raised eyebrow and faint smirk, she blushed, and added, not that I've been looking for you, or anything, I just – well.

Naomi grinned, plucked the vodka from between Emily's fingers. I've never been to one of these parties before, she said, smoothing her hair back self consciously when she noticed Emily staring at her intently (it was still growing back, and fell about two inches short of her chin). But tonight, she continued, facing the redhead more fully, I'm celebrating.

Emily's smile stretched a little wider. What are you celebrating?

Life, Naomi replied, thinking of how close she'd come to losing hers. It's too fucking short. I want to enjoy it while I can, seize the fucking moment or whatever. Do whatever I want, you know?

Yes, Emily answered, shifting closer. You have to take what you want when you have the chance, because you might never get it again.

Naomi swallowed, registering how close Emily's face was to hers. She dropped her eyes to Emily's pretty little mouth, and bit her lip as the redhead ran her tongue along her own.

Yeah, Naomi breathed, heat pooling low in her stomach as Emily's hand stroked the slope of her neck, eyelids fluttering shut as Emily closed the distance between them).

"I told you I was celebrating life." Naomi's smile is shaky, nostalgic. "The last couple of years had been really shit, and then suddenly I was told that I was fine, and it was over. And I was so, so happy, and I went to that stupid party and we kissed and it was like I was starting over, living for the first time in fucking years. And yeah, okay, so it all went kind of shit after that, but you changed everything, Em. You fucking…you are everything to me.

"But I'm not fine anymore. It's not over." Naomi chokes on a sob. "I might not even have a life to celebrate for much longer."

Emily presses her lips together as hard as she can to keep from screaming, shakes her head from side to side as if it can change the horror of what Naomi is telling her. "Naoms," she says, and kisses her even as her heart is tearing in two, "what's wrong with you?"

There is something breaking in Emily's eyes, and Naomi thinks of ripping off a plaster incredibly fast to make it hurt less before she opens her mouth and the truth spills out.

"I have leukemia," she breathes, and Emily feels like her organs have been clawed from her body and left her hollow and empty; the sound that fires up her throat doesn't even come close to words, and Naomi thinks that plaster thing is bullshit because there's just no way this could ever be painless. "This isn't the first time, and that night we kissed I was celebrating because I was in the clear and the cancer was gone. But now it's back."

Emily crushes her hands to her mouth to stop herself from vomiting, her tiny frame convulsing with sobs as it dawns on her that Naomi could fucking die. "I'm so sorry, Em, I'm so fucking sorry."

Emily looks at Naomi, and for the first time ever wishes she wasn't so fucking in love with her that she can't think straight, because the way Naomi looks right now, so small and lost and absolutely fucking terrified, is killing her. She locks her hands together at the back of Naomi's head and kisses her with everything she has, and Emily tastes the sorrow on her tongue.

Emily pulls away then, because Naomi has to know that she'll never let her go.

"It's okay, Naoms," Emily whispers, even though it's not. "You'll get better, just like before. We can do this together." Naomi's face slackens with shock, like she can't believe what Emily is telling her. Emily stares deeply into blue and tired eyes, and makes Naomi a promise she could never break. "I'm not leaving, Naomi, I'm not going anywhere. I fucking love you, and we will make it through this together."

When Emily feels Naomi collapse against her chest, her face resting a few inches above her heart, she kisses the top of her head and makes a silent promise to herself that she will do everything in her power to keep Naomi with her, where she belongs.

Except.

Emily feels something hot and sticky on her chest, soaking through her shirt, and then Naomi is twisting away from her and wretching, and Emily watches in horror as bright red blood spills from her mouth like a fast-flowing waterfall, the bedsheets coloured crimson as Naomi starts bleeding from every fucking orifice she has and screaming in pain.

Emily screams for help and reaches out for her, her promise breaking as Naomi slips away.


	9. Let me know what piece I've lost part 1

**Author's Note:** I am so sorry this took so long to get up, but I got my GCSE results a few days ago and me and my friends have been celebrating and getting ready for Sixth Form, so I've been super busy. I am going to try and update much quicker from now on, as I'd really like to finish this before school starts – there's only a few chapters left now, I reckon. To make up for the delay, this chapter is over 8,000 words long (IKR?) so it's in two parts, and you all know what happens if you review both parts… Also, thanks so much to Hoden for rec-ing my fic and getting me some more readers, that was totally awesome And you should all be reading 'Never Say Never Again' because it is absolutely brilliant and if I don't find out what Naomi's secret is soon, I'm going to explode. JS.

Also, follow me on twitter if you like .com/safertohateher8

The pain is nothing like Naomi remembers.

She can feel it everywhere, in her bones, her gut, her chest, and she has no idea what's bleeding inside her but it feels like she's burst into flames on the inside, imagines the blood that's choking up her throat and out of her body to be smoke, desperate to escape and burning everything in its path.

There is far too much blood in her mouth and her lungs for her to scream at the agony of it all, but when she sees one of the doctors dragging Emily away from her and out of the room, sound almost escapes; _no, _she wants to plead, _don't take her away from me, I'll die without her._

Another wave of blood erupts from her mouth, wet and sticky and posionous, and Naomi fears she'll die either way.

As everything gets redder, the energy is slowly sucked from her body, and Naomi has to fight to stay awake as she feels someone push her back into the bed, insert an IV into her hand and an oxygen tube into her nose.

Her vision starts to swim, and she catches sight of the array of different IV bags hanging above her head.

Intravenous fluids.

Plasma.

Blood.

A shockwave of pain shatters through her and Naomi's eyes roll back in her head as everything starts to turn black.

Naomi prays to every higher power she can think of that one of those things will save her life.

;;

Once, when Emily was six, she and Katie had been playing outside in their garden when Katie tripped over one of James' toy trucks and cut her knee open on a rock.

She had screamed loud enough to wake the dead as a slow and steady stream of blood trickled down her leg, and Emily had frozen where she stood, turned paper white at the sight of all the red staining Katie's skin, her socks, the grass.

She felt sick to her stomach, remained rooted to the spot even when her mother raced outside and yelled at her for not doing anything to help her twin, just watching as more and more blood spilled from the wound.

Katie had needed stitches, and refused to speak to her for a week for being so useless.

Emily watches Naomi bleed out before her, muscles locked tight and her throat sealed shut, and wonders what price she'll pay for her inadequacy, this time.

Emily feels someone curling their hands around her shoulders and pulling her out of the room, starts screaming at them and struggling to stay at Naomi's side as adrenaline kicks in, and suddenly she's desperate to hold her, touch her, fix her, because she might not get the chance to again.

But whoever is clutching her is doing so tightly, a firm grip that drags Emily out into the hall as doctors flood into Naomi's room and swarm around her like bees. They have their hands all over her, and Emily wants to scream at them to be careful because Naomi is tiny and fragile and they might break her.

Emily can see everything that is happening through the window to the hospital room, and breaks free from her mother's hold to press herself against the glass, wanting to be as close to Naomi as she can. There is hardly an inch of her that isn't covered in blood, and Emily starts crying and choking on air as she watches it continue to pour from her nose and mouth, spread across her thighs, the crimson clashing starkly against the white pallor of her skin as she thrashes about on the bed in agony.

(Emily's pain renders her immobile, utterly helpless against the cancer that's killing the girl she's in love with.)

Gina collapses beside her, crying silently and choking out a mantra of _no no no please no_ in a voice that rips Emily in two, because fuck, she might really lose Naomi, this time.

Emily reaches for her hand blindly, feels Effy wrap an arm around them both from behind, the three of them striving to hold each other together.

It's all a little futile, Emily thinks, feeling Effy's tears soak through her shirt and Gina's hand shake in her own, because they are clearly already broken.

"What are they doing to her?" The words fall from her lips unbidden, the sight of Naomi being pumped full of whatever the fuck is in those IV bags making bile rise in her throat, and none of it seems to be working, because she's still losing blood, and before Emily can stop it the thought that she's running out of it crosses her mind and makes her blanch violently.

Running out of blood, and out of time.

Her mother speaks up from beside her. "They're infusing her with plasma, so the platelets will clot her blood and the bleeding will stop. They're giving her blood, too, to make up for what she's losing. The IV fluids compensate for lost fluid volume, and the oxygen tubes increase the efficiency of her remaining blood supply." Emily feels a hand rubbing circles on her back, something her mother did to calm her when she was little. "Em, they're saving her life."

Gina crumples to the floor, gasping for air that she can't seem to keep in her lungs; Emily can't imagine how it must feel to have lived through this before, the horror of watching someone you love on the brink of death; this is the first time it's happened to her, and she already feels like parts of her are dying with every second that Naomi keeps bleeding.

And it's far from over.

"I think we need to call the others."

Emily can't look at Effy, because she never blows her composure, ever – she's Effy fucking Stonem for Christ's sake – and if she has to see the tortured look on her face, the resignation in her eyes, the fucking awful reality of it will hit her and she'll stop believing that maybe there's a chance Naomi will make it out of this okay.

If Emily loses that faith, she'll die with Naomi.

Effy sounds defeated. "They should be here, Emily."

"She's going to be fine." Emily swallows hard, watches the way Naomi's face tightens with pain, a sheen of sweat slick on her pale skin, the doctors sticking her with needles full of meds that don't look like they're working. It makes her ache, horribly. "Naoms will make it through this."

Effy is silent, and what she isn't saying breaks Emily apart into jagged pieces, the sharp edges cutting her open so that she's bleeding, too.

;;

Jenna should be used to this.

She sees this every day, the ache of loss shining brightly in a mother's eyes or a young child's tears as they are told their loved one didn't make it, that they're gone and aren't coming back; she holds strangers in her arms as they tear at the seams, the very foundations of their world crumbling down around them, and tries to say or do something to stitch them back together.

Doing so has never been this painful.

She cannot bear to watch Emily watch Naomi die – Jenna hates that she can't be more optimistic, but it really isn't looking good – and the way her daughter is gripping so tightly to that Stonem girl, who looks so young and helpless that Jenna feels her hatred for her lessen slightly, hurts her in a way that can never be remedied, because there is just no protecting Emily from this.

And Gina – Jenna looks at Emily, thinks of Katie and James, and knows that what is happening to Naomi is absolutely killing her.

There could be nothing worse in the world than losing a child.

"You shouldn't be here, any of you," Jenna states, taking a step forward. "You should go to the waiting room, the doctors will find you when – "

"When what?" Emily spits, spinning around to face her. "When it's over? When she's dead?"

"You shouldn't be watching this, Em, it's not good for you – "

"You don't get to decide what's good for me!" Emily is livid, her face flushed and voice loud. "I'm not going to leave her, I can't, I need to be here for her."

Jenna reaches out for her, but Emily flinches violently and pulls away. "Don't you fucking dare start acting like my mother now, or pretend that you care about Naomi because you don't give a shit! You hate her, you hate that I'm in love with her and you hate that you can't do anything about it." Emily wraps her arms around herself, the hurt in her voice pricking at Jenna's skin. "Are you happy, now that you're getting what you wanted?"

"I never wanted this!" Jenna tries to touch Emily, recoils in shock when she slaps her across the cheek with an open hand, blood rushing to the surface of her skin; it stings more than the force of the slap calls for.

"Emily, please – " But Emily just shakes her head, her face crumpling as she turns away from her with a finality that freezes Jenna's insides into solid blocks of ice, the bitter cold burning her like the harsh bite of winter.

Gina picks herself up from the floor and gathers the two girls into her arms, and looking at her face feels like looking into a mirror. "I can't watch," she whispers, stroking Emily's hair and squeezing Effy's hip. "It's too – she wouldn't want us to see her like this, you know she wouldn't. I wish I could be stronger for her, but I'm not. It hurts too much," and Emily clutches her tightly, guilt twisting her face, because she's not strong enough, either.

Effy nods from where she's tucked under Gina's chin, a single tear tracing down her cheek, and gently tugs on Emily's hand to get them moving away from the devastation before them, looking back at Jenna over her shoulder with an apology in her eyes.

Jenna watches them go, empty with a numbness she can feel in her bones, and realises she was right.

There is nothing worse than losing a child.

;;

(Katie.)

_Naomi has leukemia. Doesn't look good. Get to hospital now._

Katie drops her phone to her bedroom floor, stares at it in shock until the screen's glow dissipates and Effy's text can no longer be seen.

It's a joke, Katie thinks, becoming unbearably hot with panic and steadying herself against a wall, horrifically dizzy. It's got to be a fucking joke, something stupid and retarded and sick that only a twisted cunt like Effy would find funny, because Naomi is fine; Katie had seen her only two days ago, at college on Monday, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with her then, and things like this don't happen that quickly, and like, Emily would have told her if something was wrong.

The air rushes from Katie's lungs as her legs give out beneath her.

_She's covered in bruises, Kay. They're all over her._

I'm just so worried that someone could be hurting her.

_What if she tells us something awful?_

Katie's flying down the stairs and out of the door with a speed she didn't know she had, crashing into her dad and James on the driveway; she shakes off her dad's questions and tells him to just fucking drive her to the hospital because Naomi is there and there's something wrong with her and like, she has to see her before –

It's only when she's sat next to James in the backseat – who is gripping her hand tightly with his head buried in her shoulder, her dad breaking several speed limits as he floors the accelerator, knuckles white where he's gripping the wheel so hard Katie fears it might snap – does she realise just how much her whole fucking family cares about Naomi.

(Except her mum, but fuck her, because she knows fuck all about Naomi Campbell.)

It takes the feeling of her cheeks getting wet to make Katie realise the reason everything around her is blurry and out of focus is because she's crying.

;;

(Cook.)

_Naomi has leukemia. Doesn't look good. Get to hospital now._

He's smoking in the park when Effy's text comes in, and the words paralyse his chest with an ice cold feeling that has him shivering all over, unable to release the smoke he's inhaled even as it burns his lungs and makes it near impossible to breathe.

Cook deletes the text, shakes his head with his face screwed up even as tears scald his eyes. He crushes his fag in the palm of his hand, listens as his skin sizzles and then clenches his hand into a fist and punches it into the side of the slide he's leaning against, over and over until the metal is a dented, bloody mess and his knuckles are worn down to the bone.

That pain doesn't compare to the one that's eating through his chest, gnawing at the muscle that's beating a hundred times faster than it should be.

Cook starts running as fast as he can, determined to race to the hospital and prove that this isn't true, that Effy has it wrong somehow, because there's no fucking way this can be happening.

Cook remembers the last time he saw Naomi, at college on Monday, the way something had been off about her; Cook's never been particularly good at reading people, but the look in her eyes had been troubled at best. At worst –

Cook starts crying so hard the tears run off his face and down his neck, dampening the collar of his shirt.

It feels a lot like drowning.

;;

It's chaos.

"Her systolic BP has fallen to 100mmHg and keeps decreasing – "

"Marked tachycardia of over 120 bpm and tachypnea of over 30 bpm – "

"Systolic pressure is still decreasing – "

"30-40% blood volume loss, she's becoming anxious – "

"She needs more blood, two bags of A negative, now – "

Total chaos.

;;

(Panda.)

_Naomi has leukemia. Doesn't look good. Get to hospital now._

Her mum is telling her to put her phone away, that it's impolite to use one when at the dinner table, but Panda's not listening; her mouth falls open as she reads the message, a large bite of Yorkshire pudding dropping out and splattering gravy over her shirt as it hits her plate, and Panda doesn't even care that her mum is yelling at her and that this shirt is her favourite, because this is awful.

Panda's not entirely sure what leukemia is, knows it's cancer but doesn't know much else besides that. She knows it's bad, though, well bad, and the word sounds horrible in her head, gives her a migraine like when she eats too much ice cream too fast and has to screw her face up until it goes away.

It feels like that, but much worse, because Naomi is her friend and Panda might not know much about it, but she is one hundred percent sure that leukemia doesn't go away if you wait it out like brain freeze does.

In fact, Panda is almost certain that if you wait too long, leukemia will kill you.

Panda bolts from the table, leaving a full plate of food and her screaming mother behind, and half legs it to the bus stop a few streets from her house.

She thinks of last year, and the girl she'd never actually spoken to saving her skin at her pyjama party by telling her mum that Thommo was her boyfriend, even though she wanted to surf and turf Emily, and feels something tugging her heart down into her stomach.

Panda crosses her fingers, closes her eyes, and makes a wish.

;;

(Freddie.)

_Naomi has leukemia. Doesn't look good. Get to hospital now._

When Freddie had seen that he'd got a text from Effy, he'd smiled unwillingly, excited at the prospect that she wanted to talk to him. It drops from his face the second he reads the first three words, his expression slack in disbelief, convinced the spliff he's smoking is playing tricks on him, fucking with his mind, because this sort of shit doesn't happen in real life.

It's the stuff of horror films, this.

He sits up on his sofa in the shed, throws the spliff to the floor and shakes his head, rereads the message several times over – nothing changes, and reality punches through the haze of his high like an iron fist.

Freddie doesn't know Naomi all that well, had spent much of last year wrapped up in his own drama with Effy and Cook and pretty much ignored everyone else, but he likes her – she's funny, and smart, clever with words and doesn't take shit from anyone, which Freddie respects because he's never been that brave in his life.

And she'd tried to help him. That one time in English, when Josie had been prattling on about _Hamlet, _and Naomi had basically told him to fucking grow a pair and go after what he wanted instead of being a boring old wanker wallowing in self-pity.

She was there for him, then. And Freddie is going to there for her, now.

;;

"Start inotrope therapy – dopamine and noradrenaline, she's bleeding out – "

The pain is excruciating, but Naomi fights to stay awake, knows that if she lets the blackness take over she'll never see the light of day again.

Never see Emily again.

Naomi feels needles stick into her skin, liquid burning through her veins where her blood used to be (it's still pouring out of her like water from a tap; she can feel it bubbling inside her and spreading beneath her skin, and it feels like she's drowning on the inside) and almost bites through her lip trying not to scream.

There's a fire raging inside her, and it's so fucking tempting to just let go and put an end to the pain.

Her eyes flutter closed, and she pictures Emily's brown ones, can see in her mind the hurt reflected in them and how it rivals her own.

Naomi opens them again, and keeps fighting.

;;

(JJ.)

_Naomi has leukemia. Doesn't look good. Get to hospital now._

It takes JJ three seconds to read the text message, and approximately another second and a half to process the magnitude of the information it contains. Another five seconds pass whilst he blinks a dozen or so times blankly, a number of emotions he can't name or control raging inside him, and it takes seven more before he hurtles downstairs and into his kitchen, wrenching open his fridge door and pulling out the mango juice with shaking hands, drinking directly from the bottle until it's empty.

For the first time ever, it doesn't do a fucking thing to help.

JJ starts breathing heavily, expressing himself the only way he knows how and kicking the kitchen cabinets as hard as he can and yelling his frustration and pent up feelings into his empty house, glad his mum isn't home because he fears if she came near him he'd strike her in his anger.

(Here is what JJ knows about leukemia:

It's a malignant disease of the bone marrow and blood, characterized by the uncontrolled accumulation of blood cells.

Incidence rates for all types of leukemia are higher among males than among females.

Each year around 7,400 people are diagnosed with leukemia in the UK – around 20 people each day.

Leukemia is the eleventh most common cause of cancer death in the UK, causing around 4,300 deaths each year.)

For the first time ever, JJ despises the fact that he knows something about everything.

He knows Naomi doesn't like him too much, because he had sex with Emily, and the blonde has always kind of scared him, but she makes Emily happy, and she's much nicer than she used to be, and she's pretty and sort of lovely when she wants to be and he never got the chance to apologise for almost ruining things for her and Emily – not that he knew what was going on, but still – and now he might never get the oppurtunity.

Fucking shitification, JJ thinks, slamming his front door so hard the glass panes nearly shatter, tearing up the street as fast as his legs will carry him.

;;

(Thomas.)

_Naomi has leukemia. Doesn't look good. Get to hospital now._

Thomas had learned very quickly that England was not the nice place he'd once thought; it was full of drugs, bad people, more crime than he'd ever encountered, and a generation who didn't understand anything about the world.

But this – Thomas believes this to be the worst thing of all.

Thomas knows disease, sees how it affects his little brother Daniel, makes him sick when he has done nothing to deserve it, and sometimes it makes him question his belief in God as well as this country.

Thomas casts his thoughts to Naomi, the bright and intelligent young girl who is passionate about helping people and saving the world, making it a better place for others, and finds his faith in his God fading even more.

A single tear slips down his cheek as he thinks of how this will break everyone, when they have only just put themselves back together from the horrors of last year. Naomi is a good person, and Thomas finds it entirely unfair that something so awful has been inflicted upon her; she has always been kind to him, had helped him sell those drugs last year when he needed the money to pay for his flat, even though he was a stranger to her.

Thomas wipes his eyes and bows his head in prayer, hoping more than ever before that this time, his God will listen to him.


	10. Let me know what piece I've lost part 2

Something starts working.

Her systolic blood pressure increases.

The pain starts fading slightly, and there's no longer blood creeping up her throat or spreading from underneath her and wetting her thighs.

Her heart rate has slowed down, stopped hammering against her ribs so violently the bones bend and break.

There are no longer hands wrapped in surgical gloves running all over her body, sticking her with needles and administering drugs, trying to heal.

The blood on the doctors' scrubs is dry, a dull red instead of the bright crimson colour it is when fresh.

She's stopped bleeding.

She's alive.

;;

It's ridiculously unlikely, and doesn't make any sense in terms of distance and speed and mode of transport, but the six of them arrive at the hospital at the same time, with the same wet, solemn eyes and breaking hearts on their sleeves.

They glance between themselves helplessly as they drift together outside the massive glass doors, the situation becoming a thousand times more real as they read the devastation on each other's faces, listen to the words hanging in the air that no one can bear to speak.

If they break the silence, it will only trigger more destruction.

;;

James watches the six of them stand before the hospital with his head pressed to the backseat window, his breath fogging up the glass and blurring them slightly; they look helpless, utterly destroyed, like the hospital is some enormous monster that's going to eat them alive the second they step into it, and James doesn't blame them for not wanting to be sucked in.

He's scared, too.

He knows it's not really his place to be there for Naomi – he doesn't think she likes him much, really, although she's always nice to him and never hits him like Katie and Emily, though he guesses it's more to do with politeness and fear of his mother than her fondness of him – but he wants to be. He wants to see her, and talk to her, maybe try and get her to laugh – he's always doing that, making her laugh, and sometimes she ruffles his hair and smiles at him afterwards and it's actually really lovely – because he doesn't expect she's smiling much these days, if she's as sick as Katie says.

James reckons he could get her to smile. He wants the chance to try at least.

James slides his hand across the glass to clear away the condensation, watching silently as the group start to pair off – strength in numbers. The black boy and a girl wearing more colours than James has seen in his life lock their fingers together and start walking slowly towards the entrance, their steps unsteady as though they're injured, somehow; three boys band together behind them, their arms wound around each other so tight James is sure they must be breaking, somewhere; and then Katie is left alone, one of the boys glancing back at her with a pained look just before he disappears from sight.

It's the way his sister looks stood unsteadily on the concrete, so small and pale against the bright backdrop of the sunset, so full of colour when Katie is completely drained of it, that prompts James to unlock his car door and make his way towards her, his dad following closely behind.

He takes her right hand in his gently, their dad gripping the fingers of her left, squeezing in what he hopes is a reassuring way when she turns to look at him with wet and shiny eyes. James clears his throat, tries to be brave for her. "Come on, Kay. She needs you."

The tears start falling thicker and faster down Katie's face even as she stumbles deliberately towards the glass doors, fiery determination brightening her eyes.

If this is the state Katie is in – and James knows she likes Naomi, loves her even, though she'd never admit it – he can't bear to think about Emily.

;;

Arizona tells them Naomi is stable – her scrubs so red there's almost no blue to speak of – and Emily feels the iron grip around her heart loosen and it starts beating again.

"She's okay? She's not going to die?"

Arizona sighs, the blue in her eyes incredibly bright. "Not at the moment. But if we don't start treatment soon, she's going to haemorrhage again, and we might not be able to save her."

Gina and Effy sink into their seats, the brunette placing a trembling hand on Naomi's mum's back when her head falls into her hands and an almost inhuman sound escapes her.

Emily wipes her eyes – which are rubbed red raw from crying by this point – and takes a deep breath, something uneasy stirring her stomach at the looks on everyone's faces. Sure, it's a shit prognosis, and everything inside Emily is aching at the thought of Naomi having to go through all this again – that it won't make a difference and she'll lose her anyway – but Naomi has come this far, has just survived something fucking awful that no one was expecting her to, and she's beaten this three times before against the odds.

Now is not the time to give up on her.

"So, just start the treatment already. She has a chance right? If you start right now?"

Arizona's eyes drop to the floor and Gina starts crying harder beside her; Emily turns to Effy with a creased brow feeling like someone has stolen all the oxygen from her lungs.

Something isn't right.

Effy's jaw tightens as she sucks in her cheeks, face hardening. "Naomi doesn't want treatment."

Emily's face slackens and her eyes grow wide. "What?" she says, her voice flat and barely there, almost lost in the noise of the waiting room. Effy stays silent, shakes her head minutely. "That's not true."

(Because if she wishes hard enough, it might not be.)

"No," Emily exclaims, an angry husk to her voice, because what the fuck does Naomi think she's playing at? "No, she wouldn't – there's no way she'd leave us here, she fucking, she wouldn't do that, Eff." Emily grabs Effy's shoulder, pulls her close so their faces are inches apart and she's staring into cobalt blue irises. "Please. Tell me she wouldn't do that."

It's impossible to misinterpret what Effy isn't saying, and Emily feels like she's been ripped apart and reassembled incorrectly, so that every part of her is messed up and out of place.

No one has given up on Naomi.

She has given up on herself.

;;

Naomi wakes to the play of stray rays of dying sunlight falling across her face, filtering through the slits in the blinds and starting a burning in her head, and it's only when she attempts to turn her face away that pain shoots through her body and she realises that everything really fucking hurts.

Naomi groans, but it irritates the fuck out of her throat, which is beyond sore from vomiting; the muscles ache deeply, and the coppery taste of blood is strong on her tongue and the roof of her mouth, like she's been sucking pennies, and it makes her want to throw up some more (if only to replace the metallic tang with something slightly less repulsive.)

Everything is blurry – she can make out shapes and colours, but little else, and it looks like the world has been disconnected and objects are just floating about, untethered by gravity. Naomi blinks heavily, tries to clear her vision, and her gaze drifts to the monitor beside her bed, beeping away steadily as a line of green peaks run across the screen to the rhythm of her heartbeat.

Her heartbeat – she's alive.

Naomi smiles weakly, focuses on inhaling and expelling oxygen from her lungs, and she thinks the air has never tasted sweeter; she remembers the struggle to breathe earlier, the oxygen blocked from her airways by a thick lining of blood, the crushing feeling in her chest from carbon dioxide she was unable to exhale, like she was suffocating.

She nearly died.

The smile drops from Naomi's face when she realises that she still could do. Will do, even, if she doesn't start getting treatment soon.

Naomi still doesn't want it, can't think of anything she wants less in the world; the haemorrhage had only served to remind her how fucking awful it was to be treated for cancer, and she didn't have a clue what they could give her anyway – with APL, once one treatment had been utilised, it became pretty much ineffective and would no longer work, and Naomi didn't have any options left that she was aware of; whatever they were planning on trying would probably be experimental, dangerous, a clinical trial of some description that could very well kill her anyway. She doesn't want that.

But she doesn't want to die either.

The catch-22 is making her head hurt, and although she her eyes are bone-dry, they burn anyway. It's so fucking unfair, and she doesn't care that it makes her sound childish and petulant because it's true. Naomi hates that she's been put in this position, where every fork in the road has an uncertain outcome, and whichever path she chooses to follow she'll get hurt along the way.

And she won't be the only one.

Naomi thinks of Emily and her promise to stand by her through all of this, her determination and conviction that she can not only fight the cancer, but win against it; it pulls at the threads of Naomi's resolve to just give up and let go, and it should surprise her, but Emily has always been able to unravel her completely.

Naomi doesn't think Emily is lying, just underestimating the shitstorm that is chemotherapy; Naomi wonders how much she knows about it – will she still think Naomi is beautiful when all the chemicals make her hair fall out? Will she hold her hand when she can't stop vomiting because of the constant nausea from the drugs? Will she still be there in two years time, when Naomi no longer needs consolidation therapy, or will Emily decide that it's too difficult and she's not worth the wait in the months between?

It's not a quick fix. It takes years. And Naomi honestly thinks that she won't make it through them if Emily isn't there to love her at the end of this.

Naomi closes her eyes in an attempt to clear her head, and when she opens them Emily is stood beside the hospital bed.

She looks shell-shocked, and Naomi can hardly blame her – if Emily had nearly died in front of her she wouldn't look much better – but there's a fire in her eyes that unsettles Naomi and makes her skin itch with nerves, but then Emily is crying and kissing her hard and Naomi forgets, momentarily.

She wants to tell Emily to stop, because she's been throwing up blood and it really can't be all that pleasant, but Emily doesn't seem to care, just grips her face gently with both hands and presses her lips to Naomi's in short, sharp kisses that taste of blood and tears and the possibility of an ending.

Emily breaks away, strokes her fingers across Naomi's cheeks. "I thought you were going to die."

Naomi swallows, raises a hand to Emily's face and runs it through the curtain of red falling across her face, the pain wracking her body doubling at the fear in her girlfriend's voice. "I'm okay, Em. I'm okay now."

"Yes, but for how much longer?" Emily asks, fingers stilling on Naomi's face, the fire back in full force. "I mean, if you're not having treatment, you can't have much time left, right?"

Naomi freezes, her eyes widening, the hurt and betrayal radiating from Emily cutting into her skin like a knife between her ribs. It suddenly hurts to breathe. "Emily – "

"How can you do this, Naoms?" She's furious, the muscles in her neck and jaw tightening, eyes hard. "You'll die if you don't get help, do you understand that? This will kill you."

"Of course I understand that!" Naomi snaps, shifting away from Emily even though her body screams with pain at the movement, because of course Naomi understands, she's lived through this shit for fuck's sake; the cancer's almost killed her more times than she can bear to recall, she's well aware of how dangerous it is. "I know I'm going to die, okay? But it's nowhere near as simple as you think, Em. Whatever the fuck the doctors would do to me won't just magically make everything better; it'll make me a whole lot worse, and it might not even help."

"But there's a chance. There's a chance that you can survive this and get better. How can you not even try?"

"Because I'm sick of trying!" Naomi wipes her eyes angrily, watches the way Emily's hands shake on her bedsheets, and knows she's just seconds away from breaking completely. "You have no fucking idea how hard it is, Emily – how much it hurts, how tiring it is, how terrifying. It wouldn't just be today, Em, or tomorrow, or the rest of the month – it's _years. _Years of hospital visits and medication and people staring and laughing and looking at you like you're a freak because you're bald and your skin is fucked up and you're sick; your whole life revolves around fighting against your own body, letting doctors inject poison into your veins in the hope that it'll kill off the cancer that's eating away at you, day after day. It's awful, Emily," Naomi cries, eyes closing in exhaustion. "I don't want to die, but I don't know if I can do it again, if I can make it on my own."

Emily takes a deep breath, and Naomi feels cold and shaky fingers weave between her own. "You won't be on your own. I'll be with you, Naoms. Through everything. I'll never leave your fucking side, I promise."

Naomi shakes her head, salt burning her eyelids as her eyes stay closed. "I don't want that for you, Em, having to fucking look after me when you should be out living your own life instead of fighting to save mine – "

"I don't care about that!" Emily squeezes her hand until her eyes flutter open, her face flushed and angry. "You really think I'd have a life to live if you weren't here? If you were dead?" Her grip tightens, pinching the skin at the back of Naomi's hand. "I'd be fucking lost without you, Naoms. I want to be there, every step of the way."

"That's what my dad said. It's what my friends said. It's what everyone fucking says, Em, until they realise what it's like and fuck off because it's not worth it. Because I'm not worth it."

"You are. I love you, Naomi, I'm so fucking in love with you I can hardly think straight. I don't care what it takes to be with you as long as I get to have you; I'll take anything I can get. If being with you means living in hospital for the next few years, having dinner dates in a shitty canteen and sleeping in a room that never really gets dark because of glowing heart rate monitors, then that's fucking fine. Fucking brilliant, even, as long I have you with me."

Naomi's tears have soaked into her pillow, the material wet and cold against her face, but her whole body flames with heat when Emily strokes the back of her hand, looks at her with so much truth in her eyes Naomi falls in love all over again.

It all becomes pretty simple then, and Naomi makes a choice based on one irrevocable fact:

She cannot lose Emily.

"What if I still don't make it?"

Emily's eyes darken, and she clears her throat to hide a sob. "At least we'll have had a little more time. And I'll know that you tried."

Naomi bites her lip, chokes back tears, and when she speaks her voice barely qualifies as sound. "You promise you'll be here?"

Emily nods, smiling tightly, looks right into Naomi's eyes. "I promise, Naoms."

Naomi inhales shakily, breathes out an _okay _against Emily's lips as she leans in to kiss her, feels Emily collapse into her mouth with relief as all the oxygen rushes from her lungs, and then she's kissing Naomi desperately; it tastes of blood and tears and the possibility of a new beginning.

Naomi's not sure who says _I love you _first, but she figures it doesn't really matter, because she could feel it in Emily's touches and kisses long before the words ever left her lips.

And then her mother and Effy appear from nowhere, the brunette slipping into bed behind her and carefully laying an arm across her waist, pressing a kiss to her hair, her mum perching on the bed somewhere near her legs with an enormous smile on her face and tears in her eyes. "Thank fuck for Emily Fitch," she says, folding their hands together and casting a grateful look at the redhead. "She's always been able to sort you out."

Naomi laughs then, though it hurts to do so, feels Effy grin against her shoulder; Emily kisses her again, whispers_ I promise _into her ear, and Naomi starts thinking that maybe she can make it through this after all.

;;

Emily leaves to go and find a change of clothes – Naomi's blood had soaked into her tshirt and skirt, the sight of it making her feel incredibly sick – and Gina goes to find Arizona and tell her that Naomi has decided to stop being a cunt and get some help.

Effy is still spooning her, staying silent and stroking her hair casually, and Naomi feels a sudden surge of affection for the brunette; she carefully turns over in her arms, tries not to unsettle her body, and presses a kiss to her cheek before burying her head in her neck.

"Thanks, Effy. For everything," she murmurs, because Naomi honestly thinks that without her she never would have admitted that anything was wrong, and would have been sat at home or in class when the haemorrhage started, would have died before anyone knew what was happening.

Effy's pulse beats a little faster against Naomi's cheek. "You're welcome."

Naomi sighs, pulls back from the embrace and looks her friend in the eyes, tries a smile. "I kind of love you, you know."

Effy's lips twitch at the corners, before something over Naomi's shoulder catches her eye and her expression falters slightly. "Hold that thought," she says, and Naomi frowns and looks behind her.

They burst into her room in an explosion of speed and colour, a haze of fear and worry and a thousand other daunting emotions flooding in with them.

They all stare at her with open mouths and horrified expressions, and JJ looks like he might pass out; Naomi looks like death, with her almost translucent skin that is black around her eyes and blue nearly everywhere else, her mouth still red with blood, and in the oversized and papery hospital gown it's easy to see how thin she's gotten, little more than a skeleton.

They slowly filter into the room more fully, creating a semi circle around the foot of her bed, trapping her between them with their terrified gazes.

"Oh mon Dieu."

Naomi freezes, briefly contemplates cracking open the window and making a run for it – overkill, she thinks, but she really is that desperate to escape this situation – before remembering that she is beyond exhausted and in an incredible amout of pain, can barely sit up in bed and she doesn't really fancy risking her life so soon after almost losing it, so she just doesn't move in the (naïve) hope they'll go away.

Something clicks in Naomi's head, and she is overwhelmed by the desire to fucking murder Effy.

"For fuck's sake, Eff!" It comes out weak, scratchy, nowhere near as menacing and cutting as she was intending it to be. "You could have warned me."

Effy avoids her eyes and shifts away from her a little, opens her mouth to give her excuses.

Katie starts yelling before she has the chance.

"What the fuck?" The older Fitch twin stalks towards her, and Naomi almost flinches, but doesn't quite have enough energy to manage it. "You have leukemia, you're stuck in hospital and full of like, needles and drugs and all this other awful shit and you didn't think to fucking tell us?"

Her voice cracks towards the end, the angry façade slipping off her face before Naomi can blink; the aching look that lies beneath should surprise her, but Naomi knows that the hostility between them is a thing of the past, replaced by something she values more than Katie could possibly know.

She should be nice, understanding, but Naomi doesn't want to seem as weak as she looks.

(As she is.)

"I'm sorry, okay? It's not like any of this is fucking simple. I know you would have found out eventually, but I didn't want you to have to worry about all this shit until you had to."

Cook steps forward, locks his eyes on hers. "Until you died, you mean."

The silence is suffocating, like a thick blanket that wraps around them all much too tightly, and it hurts to breathe. Naomi exhales shakily, forces herself to sit up despite the pain that erupts inside her when she does so, desperate to fool them into thinking it's not as bad as it looks. "Jesus Christ, Effy. What did you tell them?"

Effy's voice is sharp. "The truth. Which is more than you were doing."

"I didn't even know the cancer was back until today, for fuck's sake – "

"Back?"

Naomi faces JJ, nods slowly. "I was diagnosed when I was two years old." There's a collective intake of breath, like a snake's hiss. "I relapsed when I was seven, and again when I was twelve." Naomi pauses, frowns. "Should have seen this one coming – five year pattern."

No one speaks, and this is exactly what Naomi wanted to avoid – it's bad enough seeing Emily and Effy deal with it all, she doesn't want the rest of them experiencing this too. Naomi knows she would have told them – there's no way she couldn't have, she's stopped being selfish – but later, when things look a little better, brighter, once she's been having treatment a while and there is good news to be shared. As it stands, they look fucking desolate, hopeless, like they know it's unbeatable, and she knows they're all thinking the same thing –

"Are you gonna die?"

Naomi's eyes snap to Panda lightning quick, and the way she's crying openly, her face creased all over and shoulders shaking with massive sobs hurts more than when the answer to that question explodes in her head, burning everything but the truth into ashes.

She thinks it's time to start being honest.

"I don't know, Panda," Naomi sinks back into her pillows, flicks tired eyes to all of their faces, "Maybe." Katie makes a noise in her throat, and Naomi smiles at her, tries to make it reassuring, brave. "But so far, I've kicked cancer's arse three times. I reckon I can manage a fourth."

Freddie chuckles weakly. "Yeah. What was it thinking, trying to fuck with a hardass like you?"

Naomi's smile widens, because this is easier, this joking around; everything hurts less this way. She manages to summon the energy to raise her arm, tenses the muscle and feels her bicep. "I know, right? With guns like these, you'd think it would've known better."

Everyone manages to smile, and it's not much, but it's enough to make Naomi think that maybe there's hope yet, and perhaps Effy was wise in telling her friends. Maybe they can't fight for her, when she's too tired to do it herself.

Thomas touches her arm, his expression warm. "If there is anyone of us who could be strong enough to fight this, it is you, Naomi."

"Yeah," Cook adds, nodding at her. "You're proper fucking fierce, you are, Blondie." He pauses a moment before smirking at her and Effy. "Also, Cookie is very much appreciating the two of yous in a bed together. Thanks for the visual, ladies."

Effy tells him to fuck off through a grin, but honestly, Naomi has never loved Cook more for making this just a tiny bit easier, simpler, for just knowing that the only way they can make it through this is to focus on the good and not the bad, not let all the shit drag them down; most of all, Naomi loves him for not acting differently around her – he's still the same twattish knob he's always been, and she's never been more grateful for him.

"I'm disappointed, Cook. You're supposed to be all about me and Naomi in bed together."

Everyone turns to look at Emily in the doorway, who looks ridiculously adorable in a pair of over sized blue scrubs and is glancing at Cook with a raised eyebrow and her arms folded across her chest.

(Naomi doesn't miss the look that passes between her and Katie, in which the older twin tilts her head to the side gently and Emily nods, just a little; Naomi smiles, because they're still taking care of each other.)

Cook roars with laughter, claps his hands loudly. "I am, Red, trust. You're still my favourite lezza couple. I'd love you even more if you gave me that tape we talked about."

Emily shakes her head and smiles, sinks into the chair beside Naomi's bed and reaches for her hand. "Not a chance, James."

Naomi's about to ask exactly which tape they're talking about – there's a few lying around and she really hopes Cook thinks Emily's joking or she'll never hear the end of it – when Arizona and her mother walk through the door, her doctor wheeling in medical equipment she recognises instantly, and suddenly everything is serious again.

"Sorry to interrupt," Arizona apologises, pushing further into the room, and everyone scatters to the right side of the bed to make room for her. "But I thought it'd be best if we got started now."

Naomi glances at Emily, who nods and squeezes her hand, at all her friends lined up against the window, blocking the rest of the world from view. She takes a deep breath, releases it slowly and turns to face her doctor.

"Okay."

And so it begins.


	11. I will hold you tightly

**Author's Note: **FINALLY. I cannot even begin to express how sorry I am for the ridiculous wait between updates; it's been close to a year, and I am truly amazed and humbled that people are still following this. Thank you so much, you have no idea how much it means to me, and it was you guys and your persistance that drove me to get this written.

I strongly advise that you reread the story before this update as it has been so long and you might find it hard to follow – I had to reread several times, and I wrote the thing ffs – but just in case you (understandably) cannot be bothered, I have included a recap of events below to refresh your memories.

I really hope you guys enjoy this chapter, as I know it has been long awaited and I really hope it doesn't disappoint. I would really appreciate it if you guys could let me know what you thought of it, what you want to see more of, your thoughts on how it should end – I'm still undecided, but I'm aiming for realism, if that tells you anything – in a review or PM. Thank you.

I will try and have the next chapter up as soon as possible, although it will probably be a few weeks as I am currently working five jobs, but there is no way the wait will be as long as this one has been.

So, once again, I am REALLY FREAKING SORRY and I hope you enjoy this update.

**RECAP:**

**Naomi was diagnosed with Acute Promyelocytic Leukemia when she was two years old, and relapsed at the ages of seven and twelve.**

**At seventeen, Naomi finds bruises all over her body that she thinks signifies another relapse; she hides this from everybody, so scared is she of having to undergo treatment for cancer again.**

**In an attempt to forget about the implications of the bruises and to turn the problem into one she can make sense of, Naomi slips back into bad habits and cuts herself wherever there are bruises.**

**Not wanting Emily to see her damaged body, Naomi refuses sex and hurts Emily's feelings, as the redhead thinks that Naomi is shutting down and hiding things from her again.**

**Whilst Emily confesses her worries that Naomi is hiding something from her – which she suspects has something to do with abuse – to Katie, Effy has figured out what is going on and tries to convince Naomi to seek medical attention.**

**When Gina discovers evidence of Naomi's self harm, Naomi is forced into showing her mother the bruises; the next day, Gina, Effy and Naomi go to the hospital where tests confirm that Naomi's leuekmia is back, and Jenna – who works at the hospital as a nurse – overhears the diagnosis.**

**Meanwhile, Emily runs into Naomi – who has gone for a walk to clear her head after the medical tests – not far from the hospital, and sees that Naomi has cut herself. Overcome with guilt that she could be the cause of Naomi's depression, Emily runs away from her.**

**Despite the doctors' best efforts, Naomi refuses to have treatment for the cancer, and she calls Emily from the hospital to tell her goodbye. When Emily overhears Jenna talking to Naomi through the phone line, she figures out that Naomi must be in hospital, and rushes there to find out what is wrong.**

**Naomi tells Emily about the cancer just before she starts haemorrhaging and nearly dies.**

**At this point, Effy texts all their friends and tells them about Naomi's leukemia, and the gang rush to the hospital to see her.**

**Naomi survives the haemorrhage, and when Emily learns that she doesn't want treatment, the redhead manages to convince her girlfriend otherwise; Naomi finally agrees to try and fight the cancer.**

**The others arrive at the hospital and gather in Naomi's hospital room, ready to help her fight the leukemia.**

"You want to pump me full of arsenic?"

At this point in time, Naomi is seriously regretting agreeing to treatment. She knew it would be dangerous – 'cures' for cancer always are – but arsenic is poison. It's lethal. By this reckoning, Naomi really does not want it injected into her veins. Call her crazy, but she's pretty adamant that that idea can fuck right off.

Arizona nods firmly, seemingly not disheartened by Naomi's reaction. "Yes. The use of arsenic trioxide in leukemia patients has proven to induce remission at a higher rate and for a longer period of time than the use of standard chemotherapy alone. It works by destroying the cancer cells, or making them mature into fully functioning cells."

Naomi opens and closes her mouth, frowning. "But it's poison. It's – it kills people."

"It kills cancer, too."

"Well, yes, but – "

"Naomi," interrupts Arizona, perching on the end of her bed and resting a hand on her knee. "I wouldn't suggest this if I didn't think it would help. If I thought it would make things worse, rather than better." She sighs, casts her blue eyes to Naomi's somewhat horrified face. "I'm sorry, but we don't have any other options. A bone marrow transplant is out of the question and you have developed a resistance to ATRA therapy. This is all we've got."

Naomi feels her eyes start to water at the thought that this is her only hope, the only chance she has left to be able to live. The burning feeling in her skin from all of her friends' anxious gazes means that the tears can't fall, so Naomi sniffs slightly, blinks until her vision clears. "Well, then. Arsenic it is."

"This'll work though, right?" Cook asks, hands buried deep in his pockets as he shifts nervously from foot to foot. "It'll knock the cancer right out?"

"The treatment has a high success rate with putting the cancer into remission. It'll take some time, but I'm pretty confident it's going to work."

"And when it's in remission, it's gone for good, yeah? Naomikins'll be right as rain again."

Arizona hesitates. "This isn't a definite permanent cure – scientists are still searching for that. But yes, there is a chance that this could be the last time Naomi ever has cancer."

It is only the brilliant smiles that split the faces of her friends and girlfriend that keep Naomi from calling Arizona out on the fact that she's pretty much talking bullshit. It's far more likely that she will be attacked by relapses until the day she dies, which – even if this arsenic shit works – is lurking somewhere on the horizon, a bleeding blackness that threatens to block out the sun. But then Emily kisses her temple, a shaky sigh of relief tickling her skin, and Naomi thinks that if she gets to spend even just one more year with this girl she'll have had a pretty fucking brilliant life.

Arizona goes through the usual list of pre-treatment questions – is she on any medication, how is she feeling (Naomi rolls her eyes, because she'd lost nearly half her blood supply just hours earlier for fuck's sake, she feels like microwaved shit) – and Naomi rattles off answers that taste familiar on her tongue and make her throat hurt with the memories they carry, the sound of them enough to make the years fade away until she's twelve years old again and facing a horror she feels she'll never get past. Emily notices, hears the fractures in her voice and starts stroking her fingers along the skin of her arm, careful not to aggravate the bruises and cuts, and it calms her enough to answer Arizona without choking on what she's saying.

But then Arizona's trying to suppress a smile, running a hand across her mouth and looking at Naomi with laughter in her eyes. "Is there any chance you could be pregnant?"

Naomi has to fight – hard – to not start laughing, bites her lip to keep the sound inside, only succeeding because she knows it would really fucking hurt. Her friends and mum clearly do not possess the same restraint and are cracking up all over the place – Cook's shaking so hard with laughter Naomi worries he'll stop breathing or something – whilst Emily blushes violently beside her, tugging on the neck of her baggy scrubs to try and hide her face. Naomi opens her mouth to say something twattish about how Emily's good but not _that_ good when the girl in question elbows her lightly in the side, and Naomi decides to save her some embarrassment. "No," she replies through a smile. "Definitely not."

"That'd be a bloody neat trick, Ems."

"Fuck off, Katie."

"Why'd you even ask? Naomi can't be preggo, because Emily doesn't have a pork sword, stupid."

"Panda!" Emily screeches, and Naomi can't help but cackle then, cursing as pain rockets up her ribs and spreads throughout her body, but still utterly unable to stop convulsing with laughter. Arizona notes how distressed she is and makes an attempt to clear the room.

"I'm sorry, I know you were all really worried about Naomi and wanted to make sure she was okay, but there really shouldn't be this many of you in here. It's supposed to be two visitors, maximum, and the treatment Naomi is about to undergo is very draining. She's going to be pretty wiped out at the end of it."

Freddie's eyes harden, and his protest is only one of many. "We're not leaving."

Arizona sighs. "You can go to the waiting room if you'd like until the treatment is finished, but even then we'll be keeping Naomi overnight for a couple of days because of the haemorrhage she sustained earlier. You can't all stay with her, and she won't be feeling up for company anyway."

"It's okay, guys, you can go," Naomi interrupts before squabbling can occur. "I won't be here for too long – I'll be an outpatient for the rest of the arsenic cocktails, so I'll be able to go home and maybe even go to college. I'll see you when I get out." Smirking, she adds, "And if you really can't stay away from my glorious self for such a long period of time, come back tomorrow during visiting hours."

Katie snorts. "A little full of yourself, aren't you Campbell."

"Rightfully so, Katiekins."

Cook lets out a bark of laughter, walks over to ruffle Naomi's hair and plant a sloppy kiss on her cheek. "Too right, Blondie. I'll see you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Looking forward to it," Naomi says dryly, rolling her eyes and shoving him off her.

It's pretty much a given that the two people that are going to be staying with Naomi are Emily and Gina, and as everyone else bids her farewell and good luck Naomi feels lighter than she has in weeks; it's the way Effy touches her hand gently, careful to avoid the IV. It's Panda's beaming smile and violently enthusiastic wave goodbye. It's Freddie's lopsided grin and smiling eyes. The way Thomas crosses himself and promises to pray for her. The ease with which JJ looks into her eyes and swears blind that she's going to be fine. Katie's fantastic glare when Naomi blows her a kiss and winks. The nod Cook sends her way on his way out of the door, more earnest than Naomi's ever seen him. The way Gina is still by her side even though Naomi's father is long gone because he just wasn't strong enough.

It's Emily, and the way she's holding Naomi so tight there is simply no letting go.

Emily listens to the side effects of the drugs they're going to pump into her girlfriend with a feeling that can only be described as abject horror.

There's the nausea and the vomiting that she was expecting, of course, and the hair loss. And, she supposes, headaches and fever and fatigue don't really surprise her all that much, either. But the bruising, and the swelling of the face and hands and feet, and the anxiety and shortness of breath, and the insomnia and the diarrhoea, and the weight gain and dry skin.

The chest pain. The heart problems. Depression.

Death.

Those side effects? Those, she was not expecting.

And the worse part is, Naomi just sits there and listens to Arizona with this glazed look in her eyes like it's nothing, like she's not going to be suffering horribly for the next two hours – longer than that, even, because this is just today, day one of the cancer treatment that stretches so far into the future that Emily starts to feel violently ill, and suddenly drained of energy. Anxiety blankets her with a suffocating blackness that steals the breath from her lungs, and her heart beats against her sternum so sharply her chest feels close to splintering.

It is this, more than anything, that assures Emily that her and Naomi are going to fight this together.

"Mum? What are you doing here?"

Jenna's head snaps up from her spot at the nurse's station and she has to do a double take when she sees her husband and only son ambling towards her, looking more lost and anxious than she's ever seen them.

"I'm working, sweetheart," she answers, stepping out from behind the desk and starting a little when James throws his arms around her waist. "What are you doing here?"

When James only shakes his head and burrows deeper into her arms, Jenna looks to Rob for answers. "Katie got a text message, from that Stonem girl. Said somethin' about Naomi bein' in hospital." He takes a deep breath, runs a hand through his hair before scrubbing it over his face, and looks more than a little bit heartbroken as he adds, "Katie says it's cancer, Jen."

Despite the fact that Jenna already knows this, her eyes start stinging with salt once again at the revelation, but she refuses to blink the tears away for fear that the backs of her eyelids will burn with the memory of Naomi bleeding out before her, Emily breaking apart as she watches her girlfriend succumb to death. "I know," she replies, shakily, and when Rob's brow creases, she elaborates. "I was working when she was brought in. She's had a haemorrhage, Rob – I don't know if she's – "

It's James' tears soaking through her scrubs that cuts her off before she can voice her fear that Naomi is dead. Emily was wrong in her assumption that this is what Jenna wants. She would never wish death on anybody, especially someone that means so much to Emily; and Jenna doesn't hate Naomi, she just hates what she stands for, hates the life that Emily's going to have to live because of how much she loves her. She wants to spare Emily the pain of being persecuted, and the only way she knows to do this is to keep her away from Naomi – it used to be the single most important thing in Jenna's life.

Now, she thinks, she'd do just about anything to make sure they never have to be apart.

Suddenly, she's fumbling for a phone, chattering away to Rob and James about how Dr. Robbins will know what is going on, and she'll page her right away for answers; she's punching in the numbers of Arizona's pager number with trembling fingers and James still stuck to her like glue when she hears Katie's voice from behind her, and she drops the phone and has to force herself not to beg her eldest daughter to tell her that Naomi is okay.

"Katie!" she calls, disentangling herself from James and clutching his hand instead as she makes her way towards the large group of teenagers drifting aimlessly through the hospital, Rob following along behind her.

Katie looks up, shock raising her eyebows and widening her eyes before they narrow slightly, and her mouth sets in a straight line; sensing a confrontation, her friends back off, settling in a row of chairs lining the wall. "Mum. What do you want?"

"What happened to Naomi? Is she okay? Where's Emsy?"

"Why the fuck do you care?" Katie sneers, and Jenna prays that the universe will not be so callous as to rob her of two daughters in one day.

"Of course I care, Katie, I never wanted her to die for God's sake! And Christ knows what that would do to Emily." Her daughter is still glaring at her, arms crossed defiantly over her chest, but James' hand is clammy in her own, so she soldiers on. "Look, if you don't want to tell me, at least have the decency to let your dad and James know. They've been worried sick."

Katie's eyes soften, and she relaxes by degrees, flashing a gentle smile towards her brother and father. "Naomi's doing okay. There's some crazily perky doctor on rollerblades starting her on some kind of arsenic shit right now."

"Emily's still with her?"

"Yeah. I don't think we're going to be seeing very much of her for the next couple of months." A pause, then, "And I'm – well. I'll probably stick around, too, just to make sure Campbell doesn't do anything arse-like."

James ponders this for a moment as he wipes his cheeks clean. "Naomi has a nice arse."

"James!"

"That's enough of that, son."

"Yeah, you fucking perv," Katie snorts, shoving him with a vaguely disgusted smirk.

Recovering some semblance of seriousness, the littlest Fitch asks, "Naomi's not going to die, is she?"

"Of course not, James," Jenna assures him, hurriedly, smoothing his hair back from his forehead, "don't be ridiculous. Naomi's going to be just fine."

The words crackle like static through the air, hollow and hovering on the wrong side of conviction, and the shreds of optimism lighting the eyes and faces of the occupants in the waiting room dies out with the slow fusion of hope into irrevocable, rippling unease.

The second that the drugs drip out of the IV bag and into her body, Naomi feels sick. The chemicals burn slowly to the crease of her elbow, and it feels like someone has boiled her blood and her veins are on fire. The pain scorches a path to her shoulder before splitting like a snake's tongue to her head and her heart, and dizziness wrenches the world upside down and all around, and it's all Naomi can do to crush Emily's fingers against her own and fight to stay conscious.

"All done," announces Arizona, stepping back from Naomi's IV pole and snapping off her gloves.

Naomi barks out a bitter laugh before pressing her head between her knees. "Hardly."

Arizona sighs. "Naomi – " She's interrupted by an incessant beeping from her lab coat that Naomi has spent enough time in hospital to recognise as her pager going off, signalling some medical emergency or another. "I have to take this, but I'll be back to check on you later, okay?"

As Arizona's retreating footsteps slowly fade away, Emily says, completely out of the blue, "I like her."

"Well, you're both in and out of luck."

"What do you mean?"

"Arizona's a gold star lesbian, Em, but she's got a pretty hot girlfriend, and she's never really struck me as a player."

Emily laughs throatily, fixing a mock exasperated look on her face when Naomi turns her head in Emily's direction. "Fuck's sake. Why are all the shaggable ones taken?"

"If I wasn't concerned that doing so would irritate the needle stuck in my hand, I'd be slapping you upside the head right about now, Ems."

Gina frowns from the foot of the bed. "Are you in pain, love?"

"Nothing too horrendous," Naomi lies.

"How long does this take, anyway?" Emily asks, folding her legs beneath her on the hardbacked plastic chair, looking curiously at the drugs circulating through Naomi's bloodstream. "And how often will you have them?"

"It depends on how I react to it – for now, they'll give it over the course of an hour or two, every day until a bone marrow aspiration shows the cancer cells are in remission. From there…well, consolidation therapy begins three to six weeks after remission and lasts about five weeks, and there'll probably be chemo for a couple of years to make sure it's really gone."

Emily nods, squeezes Naomi's hand and starts chattering away about what they could do in the month or so that Naomi doesn't have to be hospitalised. Naomi watches the play of dying sunlight on Emily's skin, and feels herself smiling as the unrelenting nausea churning her stomach quells slightly and inexplicable warmth takes it's place; Emily is still here. Emily is still making plans. Emily is still in love with her. And Naomi's head feels close to splitting wide open from the white hot pain slicing through her skull, and she aches deep in her bones as if they have been flushed through with ice, but Naomi manages a smile. Because Emily is _still here._

The sound of yet more beeping breaks into Naomi's reverie, and Gina throws her an apologetic glance as she fishes a phone out of her handbag. Glancing at the screen, she says, "Oh, it's Kieran, love. He's probably worried sick about us, just abandoning ship like that." Her mother looks torn, worn out eyes creasing at the corners. "Will you be alright if I find a payphone and give him a ring? No fucking credit on this thing."

Naomi's smile tightens uneasily, familiar tendrils of dread curdling in her stomach. "Yeah. Go ahead."

"You sure? I can always call him later, after the treatment's done – "

"I don't need a fucking babysitter, mum," Naomi snaps, fear translating into anger as it always does. When Gina's face screws up the tiniest bit and she sighs shakily before nodding and shuffling out of the room, Naomi wishes – not for the first time – that being an enormous bitch wasn't her default setting.

"Okay, what's wrong?"

Naomi just glares at Emily, because _seriously?_

The redhead colours a little, but holds Naomi's eyes, clarifying, "I mean, why are you being a prick to your mum? She's just worrying about you." There's a pause, before, "That's all any of us are doing, Naoms."

Naomi sighs, turns on her side in the bed to face Emily more fully, and decides to fuck everything and just be honest instead of callous – honesty would make a good, solid default setting, she thinks. "I like Kieran."

Emily's eyebrows quirk, and the tiniest of smiles curves across her face. "Well, Naoms, you are both in and out of luck – I heard that Kieran totally wants to shag you, but he's kind of shacking up with your mum, and he's never really struck me as a player."

This time around, Naomi makes a valiant effort to slap Emily upside the head, but her girlfriend just laughs and catches her hand between her own, kisses each knuckle gently. "Okay. So you like Kieran."

"Yes." Naomi hesitates, shifts slightly until her eyeline is somewhere near Emily's clavicle, and continues softly, "I mean, he's a twat, obviously. And a fucking disaster, even by his own admission, but he's – he makes her happy, you know? She's a fucking cow sometimes, Em, but she deserves to be happy, and she's been alone for so long – ever since…"

"Ever since your dad left," Emily completes, and Naomi doesn't even have to see the look on her face to know that Emily understands; Naomi's known that Emily just gets her in a way that no one else ever has since the first time they went to the lake, because she did need someone to want her, and that someone has never been anyone other than Emily.

"Look, Naoms," Emily begins, crouching in her chair until their faces are pressed together and Naomi's eyes flicker upwards and meet hers, "Kieran isn't your dad. He's not going to fuck off at the first sign of trouble – if he was that kind of guy, he'd have run screaming from Roundview long ago."

Naomi laughs at that, and Emily tries not to analyse why the rush of air against her cheek has her feeling so damn euphoric. Instead, she kisses Naomi, just once, almost as a prompt, because Emily knows she's not done speaking.

"I just wish I knew why he left. Why suddenly, I wasn't worth sticking around for. I know he sounds like an absolute prick, but he isn't – when he was here, he was brilliant. He didn't miss a single treatment, and he shaved all of his hair off whenever mine fell out, including his eyebrows, and made sure we had matching hats and headscarves to wear when I finally left the hospital.

"He was supposed to be here. I miss him being here. And you and Kieran and everybody else can all swear until you're blue in the face that you're going to be here, but that's what my dad said, and it was only true until it wasn't anymore."

Naomi's eyes fall closed with exhaustion, a side effect of the drugs that are keeping her alive, and the fragile flutter of her eyelashes against Emily's cheek is what makes her resolve crumble into dust. Naomi is angry and hurt and broken, and she's full of poison and on the verge of losing her hair and her skin is bleached of colour, and she's sick and tired and dying by degrees but none of that makes a blind fucking bit of difference to just how much Emily loves her, and the fact that Naomi doesn't understand this makes Emily ache so viscerally she feels as if she's the one with arsenic burning through her body. Because this girl – this beautiful, life-changing girl – is Emily's past, present and future, no fucking doubt about it, and no amount of chemotherapy and hospital appointments and relapses is ever going to slow the way Emily's heart threatens to burst with just how much she loves Naomi.

What confounds Emily the most, though, is how Naomi is the one scared of suffering losses when she is the one who could die and leave Emily all alone.

Emily is ranting all of this at Naomi between chest splintering sobs before she can even begin to think of stopping herself, and when all the words are gone and she's nothing but an empty, dried out husk, Naomi kisses her, so softly and gently that Emily nearly starts crying all over again.

Instead, she presses her forehead against her girlfriend's and breathes the honeysuckle scent of her into her lungs, and it soothes the aching sadness in her chest with every inhale. "I'm not going anywhere, Naoms," Emily promises, and Naomi can taste the sincerity of the words as they flutter against her lips. The slow erosion of this fear of abandonment that weaves and snakes its way between Naomi's ribs to tear at her heart is full of a gentleness that is so inherently Emily that Naomi can't help but believe her, purely because not doing so would break them both irrevocably.

"Okay, Emily," Naomi says, nearly crying with relief as she feels emotional wounds that are years in the making slowly stitching themselves closed with the redhead's words. She is not fixed, she's still dying, and she's hurt and scared beyond belief but she's not alone. She has Emily.

Naomi isn't sure why this epiphany tenses her stomach to the point of pain, or why pressure pushes at her throat until it feels thick and swollen, like she's on the brink of asphyxiation. It isn't until she feels the slow climb of something acidic crawling up her aesophagus that she realises what is happening, and she lurches desperately into a sitting position and fumbles for the pink emesis basin at the foot of her bed just as the wretching begins.

Each shuddering convulsion of her stomach muscles forces more vomit between her lips, and Naomi is almost choking on her own tongue. The burn of the acid scalds her throat red raw, and every violent cough feels like it's tearing her muscles in two, turning her inside out and making it impossible to catch her breath. Naomi can't even remember the last time she ate anything, but her stomach refuses to empty, and thick, acrid waste relentlessly spills from her mouth for minutes on end.

Naomi feels Emily's hands at her temples, smoothing her hair away from her face. She collects the platinum strands in one loose fist and splays the other hand against Naomi's back, running her fingertips up and down the length of her spine, soothing the muscles between her ribs that contract painfully with every convulsion; Emily's voice is a whisper of comforting sound in Naomi's ear, and her lips press fleeting kisses to the blonde's flushed skin to punctuate every softly uttered assurance.

When it's finally over, Naomi slumps backwards against Emily and feels like crying from exhaustion. The immense effort of vomiting for a solid two minutes has exacerbated the pain tearing along every nerve ending in her body at least tenfold; her abdomen hurts so bad that her body tries curling into the foetus position almost on instinct, and the rolling nausea that is welling into waves and waiting to send her sprawling to her knees to cough up her insides only adds insult to injury. It would be tolerable, maybe, if sharp bursts of pain didn't frisson inside her head with every miniscule movement, and her bones didn't ache as if saturated in ice water and her skin wasn't on fire, the slickness of sweat doing very little to quell the flames. And the worst of it is, Naomi is so utterly drained of energy, exhausted beyond the realms of comprehension, but the agony spearing through her makes sleeping an implausible possibility.

She is just about aware enough to register the slow slide of Emily's arms as they wrap about her waist, settling on her stomach and stroking softly. It does nothing to alleviate the pain, but it makes Naomi feel better somehow, and she has never been more grateful for Emily's presence than at this very moment – it occurs to her that she should probably feel embarrassed about being this vulnerable and exposed and, quite frankly, disgusting in front of Emily, but the redhead doesn't appear to mind, and when a nurse comes in the room to clean up the soiled basin on what must have been Emily's request, it lends Naomi a little more belief in her girlfriend's conviction that she is always going to be here.

Inexplicably, it is that that makes everything hurt a little less.

"Do you want to try and sleep?" Emily's voice is carefully not loud, and caresses the shell of Naomi's ear so pleasantly she almost cries.

She shakes her head in reply, cursing loudly when pain rockets through her skull with splintering intensity, and vows to never move any part of her body ever, ever again. "No. I won't be able to." And then, remembering her renewed sense of honesty, "Everything hurts too much."

"Can Arizona give you something for that? Morphine, maybe?"

"I don't do well with morphine. It makes me feel horrendously ill, and I don't think I could stand more of that right now. I'll ask her for some anti-nausea meds when she checks in – maybe then I'll be able to hack it."

Naomi's voice is fractured and broken, and Emily can almost feel the rawness in her own throat. Shakily, she asks, "Is there anything I can do?"

"Just sit with me, take my mind off of it. All I can think about is how much more of this shit is still to come. It's barely started and already I can't wait for it to be over."

There is still an hour or so of this treatment left to go, and in the interest of comfort, Emily carefully scoots backwards until her back is flush against the pillows covering the headboard, and gently settles Naomi between her legs before wrapping her arms around her again. "Okay, Naoms. Just think about how great things will be when this is over."

Naomi sighs, and somehow finds the energy to flinch when pain roars up her throat. "That's years off, Emily. It's kind of hard to envisage."

"I'll help you," Emily decides, determined to distract her girlfriend from her torment. "Ten years from now, all of this will be a distant memory. We'll be in Mexico, probably, spending lazy Sunday afternoons wearing sombreros and drinking margharitas, doing absolutely fuck all besides each other."

Naomi snorts at this, and the pain it brings is worth the smile she can hear in Emily's voice. "That sounds pretty perfect, Ems."

"Right? And even if the monotony gets to us, we're pretty much guaranteed a change of pace at some point. Cook can only last so long on his own before he'll need you to bail him out of jail."

Naomi is pretty sure her ribs just split open from laughing so hard, and she still can't quite breathe properly when she says, "Sod the fucker. I'm not trading in Mexican sex for dealing with his childish misdemeanors."

Mock sternly, Emily replies, "But Naomi, who else could he turn to? Freddie will be too busy stalking Effy, and JJ won't have the time to sort it out, being a world famous magician and all."

"What prosperous futures you see for us all, Emily," Naomi manages through a smirk, relishing the husky laughter that tickles her ear in response. Threading her fingers through Emily's, Naomi adds, "I reckon Freds and Eff will be married. They'll have a house with a picket fence and unreasonably attractive two point five kids."

"I can't really picture Effy agreeing to children. Not even if Freddie has them himself."

"I think she might surprise you."

Emily ponders this for a second, before her smile grows cheeky. "What about my darling sister Katie? What do you think she'll be doing?"

"Prostitution."

"Naomi!" Emily scolds, fighting to control her mirth both to show solidarity to her twin and to avoid jostling her girlfriend.

"What?" The blonde laughs, risking the flare of white hot pain in her skull to tilt her head upwards and catch Emily's amused yet indignant expression. "I can see her now, standing on a street corner with her leopard print skirt blowing in the wind…"

"You're evil."

"Fine. She'll be a highly coveted fashion designer with shitloads more money than sense – and okay, I won't make the joke, calm down – and some half-wit idiot footballer for a boyfriend, who fucks her off enough of the time that she'll have her own room in our Mexican holiday home to escape to should she need a break."

"That's better," Emily smiles, giving her a gentle squeeze. "So, that just leaves Thomas and Panda."

"Oh, well. They'll definitely be married. Obviously, Panda will be a Harvard graduate at some high end job bringing home the bacon, and Thomas – well, to be honest, I'm almost positive he'll have secured a position in sainthood."

Emily chuckles, hooks her chin over Naomi's shoulder to press a kiss to her cheek. "See? The future's not so hard to imagine after all."

"I guess not," Naomi sighs, closing her eyes and leaning into Emily's embrace, fighting hard to keep the pain at bay.

It's the subtle way in which Emily grips her that little bit tighter and curls her hand around her wrist in such a way that her fingers flutter over her pulse point that gives her away. Naomi knows that Emily imagines a life so much bigger for them than she can bring herself to see at the moment, so preoccupied is she with pain and cancer and the prospect of death, but Emily is not as naïve as people perceive her to be. She believes that Naomi will survive this, but she understands the reality that she might not, and the palpability of Emily's fear of suffering a loss she may never recover from prompts Naomi into scrutinising the horizon for what they could one day be.

"We'll be married, too, you know. Once we're tired of Mexico and travelling the world, and feel like settling down. It'll probably be a small wedding, just the others and our families, and Katie and Eff will be bridesmaids – don't worry, I'll make sure Effy's not hiding any bricks in her bouquet – and maybe JJ and Cook can share best man.

"We'll buy a house, in London, probably, so you'll have your pick of schools for teaching positions and I'll be close enough to Downing Street to assassinate the PM if need be. It'll have to have a spare room so Cook can hide out from the police, and one for Katie for when she needs a break from fame. And, you know, there'll be other bedrooms, too. For our two point five kids.

"We'll adopt, probably, although I suppose we could snag some sperm from somewhere and do it naturally – you can be the incubator, Em, although if we end up with twins we're picking our favourite and leaving the other in a wicker basket in the reeds…I'm joking, of course. Having two little babies that look just like you sounds pretty fucking perfect if I'm honest.

"We'll cry when the kids leave home, but only for the first few days before we realise we can have sex wherever and whenever we want, and we'll just walk around the house naked all the time doing fuck all but each other, like you said. And there will probably be grandkids at some point, and we'll cry about how old we are and try to drink vodka from the bottle and smoke spliff like we used to just to prove we're still as young as we are now, but when that nearly kills us we'll face reality and grow old together like we were always meant to.

"And we'll still love each other just as much as we do now."

Emily's tears are slick on Naomi's clavicle, and her chest is close to bursting with the conflicting sensations of just how fucking badly she wants every single goddamn second of the life Naomi sees for them, and the mindnumbing horror and desolation that she might never get to experience a moment of it.

Naomi shifts herself until they are face to face, and all she can see are tortured yet hopeful mahogany eyes. "I'm not going anywhere, either, Emily, if I can help it."

It's not a promise, it's not a sure thing, and their lives could crumble to dust around them before they ever even properly start, but Naomi is fighting to stay alive to give them a chance at a life together that has barely started; it's the beginning of what could be a beautiful future, and whether they have one year or eighty, Emily knows they will steal perfect moments inbetween all the pain and heartbreak that will make every single second of sickness and horror worth it.

What it comes down to in the end is that Emily can't help but believe her, purely because not doing so would break them both.

Irrevocably.


	12. Heal the scars from off my back

**Author's Note: **One chapter left after this. It's been a great ride, I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have.

Naomi is released from the hospital Friday afternoon feeling like death warmed over from her most recent bout of arsenic therapy, but Emily has one hand splayed across her shoulder blade as the other steers the wheelchair towards the exit, and she is warm and happy and chatting to Arizona as the blonde doctor skates alongside them on her ridiculous sneakers, so it's a detail that Naomi almost manages to overlook.

"So," Arizona begins, turning to face Naomi when they are stopped outside the hospital doors. "I expect to see you here every day at four o'clock for the treatment – for the next six weeks at least. At that point, we'll do a bone marrow aspiration to determine whether or not you are in remission. If you aren't, we'll schedule a longer and more intensive treatment plan with the arsenic, and if you are, we'll work out the chemo schedule, okay?"

"I know the drill," Naomi replies, a little shakily as she carefully manouvers herself out of the wheelchair, Emily sliding an arm around her waist to support her the second she's upright. "I'll be here." When Arizona extends her hand, flattening all of the digits to her palm besides her pinky finger, which she curls into a hook, Naomi rolls her eyes even as her lips curve into a smile. "Mature," she snarks, even as she entwines their fingers and shakes, once.

Arizona smiles. "It's insurance. There's no way you'd break a pinky promise."

"The guilt wouldbe unbearable."

Her doctor breaks into gentle laughter even as Emily mock-reprimands her, and then Gina brings the car around and Naomi bids farewell to the woman who is saving her life for a fourth time with a fist bump and what would have constituted as a hug if Naomi was that sort of person, but she isn't, and so it doesn't.

"Thank you, Arizona."

"Don't mention it."

In the car, Emily curls into Naomi's side, and the heat of her skin helps to quell the nausea roiling her stomach slightly. The apple scent of her cherry red hair soothes the pain vibrating through her skull, and the warm kisses she presses to Naomi's neck chase away the chill wracking her body.

Fuck the arsenic, Naomi thinks, burrowing into her girlfriend's warmth. Emily is the best medicine.

(Later, back at the house, she runs into Kieran sitting at the kitchen table whilst she's looking for her pain meds.

Ah, the prodigal child returns, he quips, glancing up from his steaming mug, newspaper forgotten. You and your mum gave me quite a fright, disappearing like that. I was afraid you'd left me for pastures greener. Or finally buggered off to actually save the world one lentil at a time.

What, and left the wholesomely cynical Irishman behind? Naomi grins, popping some pills from a cabinet and settling herself opposite Kieran, gritting her teeth against the sensation of her intestines knotting themselves together like shoelaces, forcing a smirk. We wouldn't dare.

Good to know. His expression shifts from bemusement to a gentle sadness, and Naomi's gut tightens even further. You could have told me, you know. I should have been there, looking out for the two of you. I would have been there, Naomi. And I will be from now on, okay?

You don't have to, she mumbles, twisting her fingers together, avoiding his gaze, because he doesn't; he's not her father.

But Kieran shakes his head, and that teasing glint is lighting his eyes again. Are you kidding me? I love hospitals – so many drugs, so little time.

Naomi laughs, insides uncoiling slowly, tension fusing to calm. Well, you'll have to get in line. There's a rota.

JJ?

Yep.

Fucking hell, Kieran gripes, shaking his head. Tell the fucker to pencil me in. I'd like to see him try to spell my last name. See how he likes his rota then.

Somewhere inside Naomi, a weight lifts, and an emptiness erodes; Kieran is not her father, and that's just fine by her.)

Outpatient therapy is just as Naomi remembers; in lieu of a bed, there's a battered old recliner that's worn well past the point of traction, and she keeps sliding into a slouch at its base. It's adjustable, kind of like a dentist's chair, so she can sleep if she wants to, and there's a shitty little plastic tray that masquerades as a table attached to it should she want to read or smash her head on something. The room is sectioned off by curtains for privacy, and in her tiny little square compartment Naomi can pretend that there are no other patients in the cancer ward who are suffering the same way she is, and it's all so familiar to the years before that Naomi can't stand it – after all, familiarity breeds contempt.

Speaking of contempt.

"No offence or anythin' Naomikins, but that is proper disgustin'."

Naomi spits into the emesis basin provided by the nurses in an attempt to erase the taste of vomit from her mouth, draws a hand across her lips and then gives Cook the finger. When he simply chuckles gleefully, she glares at him as best she can with a pounding headache and slouches back into her chair with closed eyes.

"No one's forcing you to be here, Cook."

And they weren't. The gang had traipsed back into Naomi's room after she'd finished her first treatment – sometime around ten in the evening, she thinks, and she isn't sure she wants to know the kind of shit they pulled to get around the very strict rules about visiting hours – and devised a rota of sorts about who was going to sit with Naomi during treatments, despite her adamance that she didn't need a fucking babysitter.

(Katie had rolled her eyes and told her to stop being a stubborn cunt whilst Effy glared in a way that said _let us do this or I'll take a rock to your head _and Emily had simply _looked _at her and that had been the end of it.)

Of course, Emily demanded to be there every day, but Naomi didn't want that for her; she'd get behind in college, and probably end up severely depressed, and – to Naomi's surprise – the others had argued that they wanted to be there, too, and the hospital's restrictions on visitors for outpatients eventually led to everybody taking turns according to their surname's position in the alphabet (fucking JJ.)

And so, for Naomi's first treatment as an outpatient, which was putting her through absolute hell and had caused her to vomit sixteen times in the last hour alone, she had none other than James Cook for company.

Lucky her.

"I wanna be here," Cook mumbles, scratching at the back of his neck before tugging on those fucking ridiculous suspenders, and the sincerity startles Naomi for a moment.

She forgets, sometimes, that Cook's actually a decent human being.

Recovering, and twisting on her side to face Cook in his shitty plastic hospital chair, careful not to upset her IV, she gripes, "So there's no chance you can go and be a cunt somewhere else, then?"

Cook grins. "Not likely, Naomikins."

"Shame."

"You love me."

"Falser words have never been spoken."

"Fuck you," Cook laughs, in that gasping, breathless way he has, with glinting eyes and a shit-eating grin.

Naomi can't help but return his smile, and fires off a reply. "Fuck you right back."

They are both sucked into the memory at the exact same moment, and suddenly the air is charged with a tension that should be sexual, but isn't, just as it wasn't the day of the elections in Kieran's classroom; Naomi feels the static stand her hairs on end, and she coughs uncomfortably as she avoids Cook's eyes.

"I'm glad we didn't, y'know."

Naomi looks up at Cook, quizzically. "What?"

He starts fidgeting, fingers toying with those damn suspenders again, but he manages to look Naomi in the eye. "Y'know. I'm glad we didn't willy waggle."

"Oh, cheers, Cook. You sure know how to make a girl feel attractive."

"I'm serious. It's nice, y'know? Havin' a mate I haven't shagged."

Naomi knows Cook is trying to be sincere, but frankly, that scares her, because it's just a reminder that something is very, very wrong, and also, she honestly doesn't have the willpower to resist. "Wow, James. I mean, I'd always figured you and JJ were bum buddies, but Freds has never really struck me as a fudge packer."

Cook's laughter is bellowing, and his seat shakes along with his torso, and he somehow manages to choke out a 'fuck you, Naomikins' between convulsions. One he's calmed down, he wipes the tears from his eyes and clarifies, "I meant a girl mate, you bint. Proves I'm more than just a sensational fuck, don't it?"

"And you're so modest, too," Naomi comments with an eye roll. "But it's like I said. You're much nicer than most people think, when you're not being a prick. And you're a good friend, Cook."

His smile is shy, and impossibly pleased, and Naomi feels her heart warm for him; he may be an arsehole, but he's an arsehole with a heart, and he's sat by her side unflinchingly for eighty-six minutes as she's puked her guts up and made her laugh so hard with anecdotes of the three musketeers' adventures that she'd forgotten she was in agony for several long, beautiful moments.

But then Naomi catches sight of Cook's left arm, and feels anger swell inside her like the raging waves of the ocean. "What the fuck have you been taking?"

"Sorry?"

Naomi glares at the crook of Cook's elbow, where a midnight blue bruise is slowly blossoming on his milky skin. "You've been shooting up? Jesus Christ, James, are you trying to get yourself killed?"

Naomi can't even remember the last time she burned so intensely with fury, and the heat that flushes through her body triggers another round of wretching. Cook tries to keep her hair out of her face where it has slipped from her hairband, but she pushes him away and feels her rage building as she empties her stomach until she is brimming with it.

Cook is pumping his body full of poison just like she is, only he is perfectly healthy and Naomi is not, and it's not fucking fair. He is choosing to walk the line between life and death, risking everything to feel sky high, whilst Naomi is tied to the tracks and feels so close to death she can almost taste it. And sure, it's an overreaction and riddled with hypocrisy because she is no stranger to drugs but she's fighting for her life here and Cook is throwing his away like it's trash.

"Listen, Naomi, calm down," Cook placates, trying to grab onto her shoulders, but Naomi is having none of it, twisting out of his grip even though she feels seconds from collapsing, "it's not what you think."

Naomi snorts. "How fucking original."

"Listen to me!" Cook yells, finally securing a hold on her and bringing her face close to his. Naomi is breathing heavily and her eyes are a steely grey. Cook can't quite meet them with his own, and when he speaks, his voice is uncharacteristically quiet. "When we first came here, that night Eff told us…I asked that fit doctor of yours if there was anythin' I could do to help you. She said yeah, I could help, if I was – " Cook scrubs a hand through his hair, buries the other in his pocket, and sighing, finishes, "we have the same blood type, Naomi."

Naomi feels her face slacken, her brow smoothing out of its glare as she follows Cook's eye line to the two IV bags attached to the metal pole beside her chair. One is a little under half full with a liquid as clear as glass; the Trisenox drug that is scorching through her veins. The other contains the dregs of a thicker liquid the colour of unpolished rubies; the blood transfusion that is keeping her platelet count stable enough to stop her from haemorrhaging again.

That is a gift from Cook, trying to help her any way he can.

Naomi turns to him, a string of apologies lined up on her tongue and ready to spill from her lips, grattitude wetting her eyelashes, but before she has the chance to tell Cook what a cunt she is, she starts spitting stomach acid instead. This time, she lets him scrape platinum strands from her forehead, touch his large hand to her back and mumble hushed comforting nonsense into her ear.

Just as Naomi is finishing hacking up her internal organs, she feels Cook's gravelly voice buffeting the shell of her ear. "I fuckin' love you, Naomikins. You're gonna be just fine, ya hear me? Cookie's gonna take care of you."

On Sunday, it's Emily's turn.

"I've been going crazy not seeing you at you these things," Emily admits, nodding her head at Naomi's IV pole as they settle in for the two hour torture session, Arizona fiddling about loading the arsenic trioxide into the IV bag. "Fucking JJ and his rota."

"Emily, you're living at my house. You see me twenty-two hours a day."

When Arizona fails to completely stifle her laughter, Emily gets defensive. "We spend a lot of that sleeping! And I'll be at college again next week, so I won't see you as much. Have you sorted anything out with Roundview, by the way?"

"Mum talked to Harriet when I was first admitted," Naomi answers, wincing as Arizona slides the IV needle into her hand. "I only have to go in if I feel up to it, otherwise they'll just send work home."

"Seriously? You still have to work? I would have thought cancer was a pretty good excuse to slack off."

"Yeah, well. Harriet's a cunt."

Arizona coughs disapprovingly, and Naomi sends her a sheepish look in apology. "Well, we're all set up here. If there's any problems, just ring for a nurse, and I'll be back in two hours to check on you, okay? Oh, and watch your language, or I'll wash your mouth out with Trisenox."

Naomi winces. "Ouch."

"Ouch is right."

"What's Tryzinocks?"

Naomi grins. "Littlest Fitch!"

"Hi Naomi!" James breaks into a run towards her chair, ducks under her IV and throws himself at her. "I missed you."

Katie and Rob look on in amusement for a moment before following in James' footsteps, dragging over plastic chairs and dumping them next to Emily's, shooting greetings at Naomi as they do so, who has trouble replying because James is crushing her ribcage.

Arizona smiles at the scene, and departs with, "I'll leave you guys to it."

"What are you doing here?" Emily asks, frowning and looking a little annoyed.

"We're next in line, remember? Fucking JJ and his rota."

"_I'm _next in line, Katie. It's your turn tomorrow."

"Chill out, Ems. Christ. Twins are supposed to share things, bitch."

Emily smirks. "You want to share my girlfriend?"

"She's my friend, you tit," snorts Katie, flipping her hair over her shoulder, "not just your girlfriend."

"Aha!" exclaims Naomi, who is no longer being strangled by James – he sits beside her on a chair of his own, staring blatantly at her chest – although her face is bleached of colour, made all the more startling by the curls of platinum cutting across her forehead that are too short to be tied back and are only a shade lighter than her skin. "I knew you liked me. I want that in writing."

"Fat chance, Campbell," Katie retorts, but there is no bite to her words and her face is creased with concern.

Rob's expression is much the same. "Are you alright, love? You don't look so good."

Naomi screws her eyes shut as a particularly potent wave of nausea rolls through her abdomen and ripples up her throat, and she swallows against it, determined to make it more than five fucking minutes without throwing up. She feels Emily's hand tangle itself with hers, and the warm weight of her brings Naomi back to the present.

"I'm not so bad," she lies, opening her eyes and grimacing, "and it means a lot that you came. But you shouldn't be here, little Fitch. This isn't something you want to see."

James looks heartbroken, and argues, "I wanna be here! We brought _Monopoly_, because Gordon McPherson says that hospitals are total bollocky wank shite for entertainment – "

Before James can finish his ode to his twattish best friend, Naomi is being violently sick into the pink emesis basin clutched in her hands. Each bout of wretching wracks her whole body as though some invisible being is cracking her spine like a riding whip, and it doesn't let up for what feels like days no matter how gently Emily traces her vertebrae with shaking fingers, or how afraid James looks when his eyes shift to wide.

Finally, the convulsions stop and Naomi collapses into herself as a nurse takes the basin away.

"Holy shit."

Naomi cracks one eye open – even that hurts her head and feels like a gargatuan effort – but doesn't have the energy to focus on Katie too clearly, or formulate a reply, or feel anywhere near as embarrassed as she knows she should do. She wants to sleep for a week, but her throat is red raw and her abdomen is on fire, and she needs to pretend to be okay for Rob, Katie, James.

(Emily never buys the shit she sells.)

"You don't want to be here," she manages to rasp out, struggling find enough saliva to form the words. "It's no fun. I'm bollocky wank shite for entertainment, too."

"I think you're brilliant."

The ghost of a smile flickers across Naomi's waxen face. "That's why you're my favourite Fitch."

"I'm a close second, though, right?"

Naomi isn't quite sure where all these Fitches keep materialising from, but for the first time in forever, she feels relief relax her aching everything at the sound of Jenna Fitch's lilting Scottish accent, the sight of her anxious, angular face. Because Jenna doesn't hate her anymore, never did, really, and she is a nurse and nurses have access to drugs and Naomi could really use a chemical-induced coma right about now.

"Depends. Usually you bring up the rear, but if you load me up with narcotics I'll bump you straight to first place."

As Jenna's face breaks into what appears to be an involuntary smile, Emily's darkens to the colour of storm clouds. "What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Emily," Naomi warns, even as Jenna replies, "I'm working, love. Dr. Robbins asked me to keep an eye on Naomi during her treatment."

"Like you give a shit about how she's doing."

Rob narrows his eyes at his daughter, and cautions, "Oi, that's enough of that, Emsy. Jen's tryin' to do her job, is all, and it looks like Naomi could use her help."

Casting her eyes to her girlfriend, Emily's breath catches at the grimace twisting her face into the visual equivalent of excruciating pain; sweat beads her skin like shards of liquid glass, but there is a complete absence of colour in her sallow skin despite the fever, and exhaustion clings to wet eyelashes like leaden weights. "Stop it, Em, okay?" Naomi pleads, and Emily realises with a start that there would be anger there if the blonde had the energy to summon it. "She helped, before. Tried to make me tell you. And get treatment. And…you have two parents, Em. They love you, and they've never left you, and you take that for granted. Your mum's trying, now, to help, and be okay with us, and you need to let her, because you don't know what's going to happen, and I'm too tired to help you fight her, and I really, really want the drugs she has, so please, just stop it, okay?"

Naomi is crying with the effort of talking through her pain, and Emily swallows, guilt gnawing somewhere in her chest for prolonging her suffering. "Okay," she agrees, squeezing Naomi's hand and pressing a kiss to her palm.

There is silence for long seconds before Jenna clears her throat and annouces, "Right, Naomi. Let's get some pain meds in you. I'll be your favourite Fitch yet."

"'S'awfully cocky of you."

"Reasonably so. This stuff is marijuana based."

"Sweet Jesus, there is a God."

They are laughing, then, and as the drugs slip inside and soothe so deliciously Naomi becomes a little more conscious; she catches the look that passes between mother and daughter, a malgamation of emotions that fire back and forth between them like flashes of lightning – anger, guilt, hurt, sorrow, forgiveness, relief. Love.

By the time her IV bags are empty, Naomi is sure that she is not the only one who has been healing today.

The next day, Naomi returns to college, not because she is feeling well enough – she still feels like seven shades of shit and can't move any appendage without pain rocketing across some synapse or another – but because her mother won't stop hovering, waiting for the inevitable tragedy that will land her back in hospital and it is driving Naomi fucking crazy.

So, she calls on Katie and Emily bright and early Monday morning – Naomi had insisted Emily return home for the evening to properly make amends with her mother – knocking on the door this time because she and Jenna are on pretty good terms, and smiles tiredly when James answers it in his pyjamas.

"Naomi!" he exclaims, beckoning her inside before throwing his arms around her; when his hands inch a little too close to her arse, she smacks the side of his head and calls him a little shit.

"Worth a try," he smirks, scurrying up the stairs before she can attack him again.

Shaking her head and making a mental note to bumba mumba jim jams him later, Naomi wanders into the kitchen where the rest of the Fitch family are congregated; Rob and Jenna are seated at the head and foot of the table, with Emily and Katie between them on the side facing the door. The table is laden with plates of egg, bacon, toast and crumpets, and Naomi can't help but marvel at how different the Fitch household is to her own, where her and Gina eat stale bagels over the sink and slurp coffee out of paper cups because all the other crockery is dirty.

"Naomi!" Emily smiles, sounding so much like her brother Naomi can't help but laugh. She seats herself opposite her girlfriend, replying in kind when the others offer their greetings; in lieu of a kiss, Emily tangles their legs together beneath the table.

"James let me in," she says, not wanting to seem rude, but some of her chagrin must have shown on her face, because Emily's brow furrows angrily as she asks, "He groped you again, didn't he?"

Katie lets out a bark of laughter when Naomi nods, looking vaguely disgusted, and says tauntingly, "It's not just you, you know. He had a go at Eff the other day at the hospital. Don't go thinking you're anything special."

"Please, Katiekins. We both know you think I'm sex on legs."

"You wish, babes," snorts Katie, giving her the onceover before adding, not unkindly, "you're not looking so hot right now."

Naomi smiles. "Yeah, well. Cancer's not good for the complexion."

Emily kicks her underneath the table even as Katie chokes on her coffee, and Naomi regards the redhead's appalled expression a little sheepishly before asking, "What? Too soon?"

"Naomi, dear," Jenna intervenes, before things get too sombre, "have some breakfast, won't you? There's plenty to go around, and you need to keep your strength up." What little colour there was blushing Naomi's cheeks fades abruptly as if her skin has been diluted at the mere mention of food, and Jenna frowns deeply. "You're still feeling nauseous?"

Naomi nods, swallowing the sickly feeling chasing through her stomach, and qualifies, "Yeah, the nausea is pretty much constant. I can keep food down okay, but the pain is worse when I eat."

Emily links their hands across the table, strokes her thumb across skin which is beginning to roughen and raw from the potency of chemicals. Naomi catches her eye and smiles reassuringly, relaxing slightly when Emily returns it warmly; she has been beyond brilliant throughout this shitstorm that's torn up their lives and shredded normality to pieces in the space of a week. Naomi has simply been treading water, fighting to keep her head above the surface, and Emily has kept her afloat when exhaustion threatened to drag her down and drown her; she makes sure Naomi has her medication, and remembers to go to appointments, and she tutors her in whatever she's missed at college. She doesn't mind that Naomi rarely has the energy to do anything besides sleep, and that she looks ghost white and corpse like, and has unpredictable mood swings and no sex drive to speak of. Emily's been pretty fucking wonderful, and Naomi is positive that it is impossible to be more in love with her than she is right now.

Apparently, Emily's penchant for taking care of people is hereditary, because by the time their little moment passes, Jenna has set a steaming mug before Naomi that is brimming with a curiously burnt orange coloured and spicily scented liquid.

"I wouldn't touch that if I was you, Campbell," Katie warns, lip curling at the sight of it. "'S'probably like, artichoke and beetroot infused PG Tips or something."

"It is not!" retorts Jenna hotly, oddly defensive. Turning to Naomi, she explains, "It's my special recipe for ginger tea, love. Does wonders for nausea. I practically lived off it when I was pregnant with the twins."

Rob chuckles around his toast, adding, "That stuff's got a kick to it, you know. It's like Popeye's spinach. You'll be bench pressing one eighty in my gym in no time."

"Looking forward to it," Naomi replies placatingly as everyone else rolls their eyes, before bringing the mug to her lips and taking a cautious sip. The bitter flavour explodes on her tongue so harshly she coughs and splutters, and her mouth is nearly on fire with how spicy it is. But then she manages to swallow, and the relief is almost instant; the relentless churning in her stomach stills as if frozen, and bile stops creeping up her throat.

"Better?"

"Enormously so. Is this marijuana based, too?"

"Of course not. That would be spoiling you," Jenna mock-admonishes, and she smiles when Naomi laughs. "You should be able to make it through college with little trouble now."

"Thanks," Naomi offers, sighing with relief. "Though I'm still not particularly looking forward to it."

"Ah, that reminds me," Emily begins, warily, setting down her knife and fork and glancing nervously at Katie, who looks similarly uneasy. "Everyone kind of…knows. That you're sick, I mean."

"What?" exclaims Naomi, swallowing more tea when her stomach starts stirring again. Fucking great, she thinks, angrily. An entire day of people pointing and staring and whispering and pitying. Just what she fucking wanted. With a hard voice, she adds, "How?"

"We didn't say anything," Katie snaps, simultaneously defensive and apologetic. "We were talking about _Hamlet _in English and death came up, and before Cook or Freddie could calm him down, JJ got locked on and spilled the beans."

In the somewhat horrified silence that follows, Naomi deliberately doesn't look at Emily for fear of what she'd see on her face, but the paralysing fear translates anyway in the tightening of the redhead's fingers against her own, and the terror shocks her through the same way it does Emily.

Katie grimaces. "Sorry. That was a bit tactless, wasn't it?"

"You think?" Emily snarks, and just those two words are cracked and frayed and broken, and Naomi has never wanted to kiss her more and steal her pain away.

"It's alright, Em," she intervenes, even though it's not, but it's a reality they have to get used to. Then, trying to diffuse the tension, "Bloody JJ."

"Effy already offered to hit him with a brick for you."

"Excellent," Naomi laughs, drinking some more of her tea. "I'll be sure to collect."

Jenna looks horrified. "You girls have atrociously black humour."

"Sorry, mum. Too soon to joke about that as well?"

"You should probably get going, kids, before you're late," warns Rob. Then, thoughtfully, "or before you give your mother a coronary."

Half an hour later, Naomi can't help but think that staying at the Fitch household and giving Jenna a heart attack would have been a much less painful way to spend her day.

She feels eyes on her the second the grey stone steps come into view, and the whispering starts soon after, a snake's hiss of sound that swells and recedes as she moves through the crowds, flanked by Emily and Katie; she's gripping the redhead's hand so tightly that Emily keeps looking at her in alarm, but the pointing and the staring and the pitying makes her feel sick. She _hates _being the girl with cancer, _hates _that it is her disease that defines her – and this is on top of being identified largely as nothinng more than a lesbian – instead of her strengths, weaknesses, ideals, what makes her Naomi.

It makes her feel like she's not even human anymore.

"This is fucking ridiculous," Katie rants, glaring spectacularly at anyone who so much as glances at Naomi as they walk through the halls, "you'd think you were Katie Price or something."

"Jealous?"

Katie snorts. "Not fucking likely. I know how awful it is having everyone look at you like you're a victim, pretending to be all concerned but really just waiting for you to keel over and – "

When Katie breaks off uncomfortably just as they're rounding the corner to the school gym for the Monday morning assembly, Naomi shoots her a look, raises an eyebrow. "Still working on that tactlessness, Kay?"

"Sorry," she grimaces, rolling her eyes at Emily's thunderous glare as they seat themselves on the bleachers at the back of the room next to Effy and Panda; Cook, Freddie, JJ and Thomas occupy the bench directly below them.

Grinning, Freddie twists round in his seat to face them. "Alright kiddies, place your bets. How long into Harriet's tirade about what evil little shits we are will Doug blow the arse out of his briefs 'cause of his fucking rhubarb fetish?"

"Three minutes, tops," declares Naomi, fishing a tenner from her bag and pressing it into Freddie's upturned palm, which clutches a number of other rumpled bills. Emily guesses four, Katie rolls her eyes and opens the latest copy of _Heat _magazine, and JJ rounds it off by estimating six minutes based on the calculation of the mean time that elapses every Monday before Doug can no longer hold in his flatulence.

Students are still traipsing into the gym in long lines like asylum seekers, and to pass the time before the assembly kicks off – and partly to distract her from the hissing whispers dripping vitriol that hang around her like clouds – Effy asks Naomi how she's doing.

This catches the attention of the others, and they turn to face her with identical looks of anxiety widening their eyes; Naomi contemplates lying, but Cook or Emily or Katie would rat her out anyway, so she offers a version of the truth. "I'm doing okay right now. The treatments are pretty rough, but they give me good drugs, and Mama Fitch gave me something to help with the day to day sickness."

"So the treatments are working, right? They're getting rid of the cancer?" asks Freddie, drumming long fingers nervously against his leg.

Naomi shrugs and bites her lip, suddenly itching for a cigarette – she hasn't smoked in nearly a week. "There's no way to tell until they take a look at my bone marrow at the end of the six weeks," she replies, dreading that day already with every fibre of her being. "We'll just have to wait and see."

"You'll be fine, babe. Cookie knows these things."

"One, I'm not a babe, and two, you don't know your ear from your arsehole."

"She's got you by the balls on that one, mate."

Panda looks confused. "Naomi wouldn't touch Cook's balls, stupid. She only touches Emily's mu – "

Effy's elbow in her ribs manages to shut Panda up, but laughter echoes around Naomi as she flushes hotly, suddenly very aware that she and Emily haven't had sex for days; it occurs to her that her girlfriend, who is something of a nympho, is probably feeling the effects of withdrawal by now, but – and she feels horribly guilty and embarrassed about this – Naomi simply does not have the energy or the inclination to do anything about it. She's just so sick, and tired, but she loves Emily and doesn't want to hurt her feelings, or – worst of all – for her to get so frustrated from what Naomi's not giving her that she goes to get it from soemone else instead, and she can tell Emily, too, has realised they haven't made love in a while by the way she stiffens beside her; before Naomi can work herself up too much over it, Emily leans close to her, rose petal lips tickling her ear. "It's okay, Naoms. We don't need to. Whenever you're ready, okay?"

Her voice is sweet, and understanding, and when Naomi looks in her autumn eyes they are earnest and clear. Naomi presses her lips to Emily's for one long moment, tastes honesty and patience; hopes that Emily can translate her own feelings in the skin on skin contact, and marvels at how many different ways she can tell Emily she loves her.

They break apart just as a hush descends on the gym, and turning to face the front – Emily's hand wrapped firmly in her own – Naomi realises that Harriet has begun speaking (she sees Freddie starting a timer out of the corner of her eye, and doesn't quite manage to stifle her grin.)

But there's something not quite right with Frau Fuhrer's speech. Her tone doesn't ring with pointed condescension, or barely concealed contempt, and she appears to be having trouble not tripping over her warnings about expulsion being the consequence of on site substance abuse (Naomi rolls her eyes, because even now, Cook is rolling a spliff with practiced ease, cursing when Freddie's timer reaches the two minute mark he'd staked his bet on) and her disposition is nervous and awkward. Doug, forever light hearted and without shame, looks comically grave, and shows zero signs of splitting the seams of his trousers this morning. It's only when Harriet's tirade comes to an end seven minutes later, with every student utterly poleaxed about Doug's never before seen restraint, that everything becomes clear.

"Before you all go," Harriet starts again, wringing her hands, and the gym vibrates with groans of impatience, "I just wanted to offer our condolences, to Naomi, for the, uh, terrible news she's received, and to, um, let her know, that we are behind her one hundred percent, and that she's been a real asset to this establishment, and she will be missed." Harriet freezes, realising what she's just implied, and hastily adds, "That is, whilst she is busy getting better, of course."

Absolute silence blankets the gym so swiftly it's like sound has been shut off. Everybody has their eyes fixed on Naomi, who is pretty sure she has stopped breathing. Emily is shaking beside her, and Kieran looks livid, and Freddie's hands are curled so tightly into fists his notes are tearing, and there are tears in Thomas' eyes. Because that was a goodbye, a so long, an auf-fucking-Wiedersehen if ever she'd heard one, and Naomi feels sick with the certainty these people have in the fast approaching eventuality of her death. Hundreds of strangers' faces are painted with pity, tracked with tears, and scrutinise her so intently she feels like something less than human.

Fitting, really.

There's nothing human about a corpse.

Nine days into the treatment, Naomi suffers another haemorrhage.

She's routinely puking up the the colourful and delicious doughnuts that Thomas had brought for them to eat when pain tears across her abdomen and she starts coughing up blood in place of vomit. It rushes out of her with every staccato beat of her racing heart, floods of crimson staining the sickly pallor of her skin a wickedly dark shade until she's so slippery the doctors' gloves can't get traction to hold her thrashing body down.

Arizona is yelling orders about blood transfusions as Thomas prays in the corner, tears streaming down his ebony face, and all Naomi can see and hear and feel and smell and taste is her own coppery blood forcing its way out of her and leaving her hollow, empty and emptying, and there's a blackness tunneling her vision that looks so fucking inviting but she veers away from it, breathes through the pain and the blood swallowing her lungs even as the world blurs to black and white and rushes past her as a mask is forced over her mouth and her next breath draws anaesthesia deep inside and she's asleep when Arizona cuts her open and stitches her back to life.

(Lost in the ether, she dreams of two paths.

One is paved with bright white light, its beauty resplendant and shimmering, a fire blazing redder than she's ever seen at its culmination; but the ground is broken up into shards of glass beneath her feet, and the very thought of traversing it sends pain rocketing through her being.

The other is a patchwork quilt of darkness and shadows, smoke and ash, and it bottoms out into a dead end that is inky black with finality; but the darkness is cool, and soothing, a balm to her open wounds. It promises peace.)

When Naomi wakes hours later in the PICU, dizzy and sick with searing pain every time she inhales, near to empty of blood and energy and life, Emily's eyes are as red as her hair, and burgundy flames still burn behind Naomi's eyelids.

So does the shimmering chasm of quiet blackness, and Naomi's throat closes up when it casts shadows across the fire and glows brighter still.

Weeks pass.

Naomi's been getting steadily sicker with each flicker of movement of the clock's big hand, each box crossed out on the calendar, each swelling of the moon's silver sphere across the sky. She has managed to avoid contracting APL differentiation syndrome, the most deadly side effect of the Trisenox treatment, but she has certainly not escaped unscathed.

Her skin is red and raw almost everywhere, an ugly rash that creeps out from underneath her clothes, which irritate the broken skin so painfully her eyes are relentlessly wet with tears, and the thick surgical scar that cuts across her abdomen is an angry slash of scarlet; she cannot be touched anywhere besides her face and hands, and the only people who aren't scared to do so are her mother and Emily. The nausea is often so bad she cannot bear to eat, and it's slowly slicing inches from her waist, stripping away her substance and stretching her skin taut across her skeleton. Any drugs she's been taking to combat the sickness – droperidol, aspirin, ibuprofen – have been removed from her prescriptions as she gets weaker, due to their tendency to cause heart problems and interfere with blood clotting, especially seeing as the Trisenox drugs itself was a blood thinner. Arizona doesn't want to risk another haemorrhage, for Naomi's grip on life is so tenuous she issn't sure she'd survive the trauma.

(The worst thing about Naomi's deterioration, she thinks, is the way Emily worsens as she does. The redhead's skin is raw, too, beneath her eyes, from crying so much at seeing Naomi in pain, and her doll-like face is constantly crumpled with queasiness from the mere thought that Naomi could die at any second.

Naomi can't bear to think what her death would make of Emily.)

Still, the treatment goes on – the headaches, dizziness, chest pain, confusion, diarrhoea, tremors, trouble breathing, fever, chills, exhaustion, vomiting and all the other hellish afflictions that ravage her body continue with it – and it is Effy watching her suffer on the day that her hair starts falling out.

They are playing Scrabble, and Effy is winning by a clear one hundred points because the ice pick behind Naomi's eyes won't let her concentrate long enough to form any words longer than three letters, but it's a distraction from the sweat soaking her skin at least, and it beats sitting in depressed silence for two hours.

Naomi is keeping score – Effy is a useless mathematician, and Naomi isn't entirely sure she wouldn't cheat outrageously – and when Effy's tiles clatter against the board and she uses the 'U' from Naomi's 'RUG' to spell 'MUNCHER,' Naomi has to bite her lip hard to keep her laughter in to avoid upsetting her stomach and puking all over her friend. Effy just raises an eyebrow off of Naomi's attempted unimpressed look, and says, "Don't forget the triple word score."

She can't help but snort, then, and admonishes, "You're not supposed to make me laugh, you tit."

"Laughter is the best medicine."

"Tell that to my vehemently protesting innards."

Effy frowns, uncrosses her legs and stands, moves to beside Naomi's head. "Do you want me to call for Arizona?"

"No," Naomi replies, shaking her head, "there's nothing she can do. I just have to ride it out."

"You can't have anything for the fever? It looks like your skin is melting."

Effy's not lying. Naomi feels like she's burning right through her tank top and shorts, which are sticking to her slick skin and making her itch in a horribly uncomfortable way, and she cannot scratch because her flesh is so tender. It's agony, and her nerves are exposed and screaming, but there's nothing Arizona can do besides keep her hydrated; the risk of fever reducing medication causing bleeding is too great. "No. The damp cloth helps, though," she says, nodding to the water basin and flannel on her nightstand. "Could you – "

Effy is complying before Naomi even completes the request, and the slow slide of cool moisture over the furnace of her body is so soothing she almost cries with relief. The brunette runs the cloth over Naomi's chest and arms, across the downward slope of her concave stomach and along both legs, her touch feather light on the raw skin. When Effy draws the cloth across her forehead, her hand stills, and water drips into Naomi's eyes.

"Eff?" Naomi prompts, nudging her friend's wrist away from her face; it lands with a gentle thud on the pillow beside her head, and Effy's smoky eyes regard her sadly for one long, suspended moment before they drop to the cloth in her hand and Naomi's follow their trajectory with dread prickling the back of her neck.

Platinum strands are twisted and twined with the cloth fibres like lengths of rope, wet and wilted and stripped away; Naomi touches a hand to her scalp and it comes away tangled in a mess of sweaty blonde curls, again and again and again until Effy tugs her hand away and grips it, hard.

It shouldn't hurt this much. It's just hair. And Naomi is not one of those superficial bints that study beauty at college who think that looks are the most important thing in the entire fucking universe, but she already looks awful. Scarlet skin stretched over a skeleton, watery blue eyes washed out and glassy, back hunched where exhaustion clings to her shoulder blades. She looks sick, but she doesn't look like she's dying, but now, everybody will know that she has cancer, will look at her with pity creasing their faces because death is hiding in her shadow, ready to drag her down into the darkness. It's a physical manifestation of the malignant cancer eating through her body, maybe merely weeks from killing her, and it's a thousand times more difficult to repress this when she looks into the face of death every time she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror.

It's ridiculous on so many levels, but here, now, with clumps of her hair wound round her fingers and a balding scalp, Naomi has never been so sure that she is going to die.

"Hey, don't cry," says Effy, tracing the curve of Naomi's eye with one finger, brushing the tears away. "It'll grow back. And you're beautiful without it."

"Liar," Naomi accuses, turning her face away from Effy's stricken gaze.

There is a silence that stretches, endless, across the curtained room, coating their skin and locking Naomi's jaw up so tight that her heartache cannot translate into the dissonant screeching song it surely would do if she opened her mouth. She hears Effy rummaging around in her bag, but only casts a glance at her when she feels the butterfly kiss of bristles against her scalp.

Effy stills the hairbrush when her eyes fix on Naomi's, determined and brooking no arguments. "It's going to fall out anyway, and it'll make the fever a little more bearable. Just let me do this, okay?"

Swallowing, yet still unable to speak, Naomi nods slowly. Effy helps her sit up in the chair, careful not to irritate her sore skin, and rotates her until her legs dangle off the side, inches above the floor. Steadying one hand against Naomi's shoulder, she combs the brush through her hair with the other, heart catching as the beautiful cornsilk curls fall away to reveal the porcelain skin of Naomi's scalp. This feels too intimate to Effy, like she's peeling away layers of her friend and exposing the mess of raw nerve endings and emotions Naomi has tried to keep hidden all this while, and the depth of her pain and fear and suffering is a secret she was never meant to know. Effy closes her eyes, but the image is burnt into her brain; Naomi, stripped of life for all to see.

Later, Naomi is curled into a naked ball in the middle of her bed, mourning the loss of the last shred of pretense of normality, sobbing at the burning and stinging in her skin that's preventing her beyond exhausted body from submitting to sleep, when Emily returns from her family dinner and nearly stops breathing at the sight of her.

"Jesus," she breathes, hovering in the doorway.

"What?" Naomi snaps, lifting her bald head from her pillow to shoot daggers at Emily. "What's your fucking problem? Am I that awful to look at?"

"No, Naomi," Emily assures, exuding sadness like an aura, but not moving any closer for fear of invoking more hostility, "of course not. You're beautiful, same as always."

"Don't! Don't fucking lie! I look hideous, Em, like some fucking monster from a horror film. I'm sick, and I'm ugly, and I look and feel like shit so don't fucking lie to me and tell me it's not true!"

Naomi buries her face back in her pillow, exposing the back of her bald head to Emily's eyes, which are wet and sore with salt. Her heart clenches at the sobs shaking her girlfriend's shoulders like Naomi has curled her fist around it and started crushing. She hates seeing Naomi like this – not bald or sick like Naomi thinks – but wracked with agony, and self hatred, and still concretely refusing to believe that Emily doesn't care what this treatment makes her look like as long as it saves her life.

Emily seats herself on the edge of the bed, reaches out a hand to skin that is not discoloured and flinches when Naomi shrugs her off, crying all the while. She sighs, but perseveres, and is eventually allowed to trace the line where Naomi's platinum curls used to hit on the feverish skin of the nape of her neck. Gently, she pleads, "Look at me, Naomi." Nothing. Then, harsher, "Naomi! Fucking look at me!"

Naomi's head whips round, and she's a live wire of fury. "What?"

Emily's hand hangs in the air for a second before she drops it to the sharp curve of Naomi's face, and her skin is so flushed Emily's not sure she can even feel it. Lashless almond shaped eyes glare back at her, as wet and as blue as a rainstorm in spring, casting tears down the slope of a long, elegant nose, and set with the same hardness as the coral pink line of her mouth. "I'm not lying. You are beautiful. You are _always _beautiful to me. I don't care about your hair, or your body. I care about you, and your health. You might not look so great now, Naomi, but you are still beautiful. Your strength is beautiful. Your persistance and courage. You're so brave, Naomi. And you've survived this, you're still here, you're not dead, so who cares what you look like? It's proof, Naoms, of how strong you are, and it's proof that this is working. I just want you to live, and that's all you should care about, too."

Naomi's lip quivers, and her voice is wavery and fragile. "I don't feel beautiful, Em. I don't feel any of those things. I don't even feel human."

"You are though. You're everything, Naoms. To me, you are everything, and I love you no matter how sick you are, or what you look like."

Naomi turns fully on her side to face Emily, sandwiching her hand between her face and the pillow. Her eyes drop to the mattress and Emily's heart starts sinking low in her ribcage, close to the acid bubbling her stomach. "I just wish this was over. I'm so tired, Em, and everything hurts all the time. I can't stand it."

Emily says nothing, because what Naomi wants to hear isn't true – she can't say it'll all be over soon, because it won't. There's years of this, yet, with the follow up chemotherapy, and if the mere thought of it slays Emily's heart she can't imagine the damage it inflicts to Naomi's.

Suddenly, with a sickness that curdles her stomach and threatens to split her chest in two, Emily understands what Naomi is trying to say when her pleading eyes fix on hers and she sobs, "I need this to be over."

"No," Emily croaks, voice and heart breaking all over the place, "no, Naomi, you can't."

"You don't understand, Em. You – there isn't cancer eating at your body, or poison pumping through it. You're not in so much pain you can't sleep at night, even though tired doesn't begin to cover it, and you don't have to suffer through it for another two years. This isn't living, Em, and fucking hell, I love you, but I don't want to do this anymore."

Emily is shaking her head, and Naomi looks so fucking sorry she nearly chokes on the oxygen that feels like lead in her lungs. "Please don't give up, Naoms, not yet, there's only a few more weeks of this, and then the chemo won't be so bad – "

"It won't be good, either." Naomi's face is creased all over from crying and guilt and pain, and she stretches a hand out to where the look is mirrored on Emily's face. "I don't want to leave you – "

"Then don't! Please don't, Naomi, please, I can't, I can't live without you. I need you here with me."

"Emily," Naomi whispers, and her voice is as frail as her broken body, her eyes as sad as Emily's when she meets her gaze. "I love you. I do. You changed my life, in the best possible fucking way, and you're the best thing that has ever happened to me. And I know you love me, too."

"Of course I love you."

Naomi's crying again, and unravelling completely. "Then let me go," she sobs, pain spearing every syllable. "Please just let me go. I can stop the treatment, and feel better, and actually live a little before I die. No more suffering, no more hospitals. Just me and you, and the others, and mum and Kieran, being together while we can."

"Your mum," Emily cries, grasping at straws, "you can't – she wouldn't – "

"She already did. I talked to her, and she – she's letting me stop. She'll forgive me for it. She knows it's what I want." Naomi's eyes flutter closed, unable to witness the damage she's done. "Please, Emily."

Emily looks at Naomi through an ocean of tears, her heart aching so badly she can feel it splintering in her chest. She looks at the black circles under her eyes, her ruined skin, her hairless body, emaciated and strung out on a drug that's killing her almost as fast as the cancer is. Everything about Naomi screams suffering and agony, and forcing her to live like this when she is begging not to – it's almost as unthinkable as living without her entirely.

But Emily can't give Naomi up just yet.

"Finish the treatment," Emily whispers, and Naomi's eyes flicker open, full of protestations. "Just listen, okay? You have fourteen days left until the BMA, until we get to see if it worked. Give me fourteen more days of believing you might live. If you're not in remission, if this didn't work…then we stop. No more suffering, no more hospitals. And if it did work, even if you're better…no chemotherapy. We just take the time this treatment gave you, and we make the most of it. Maybe it'll stick forever, and we can live the life you see for us. Just fourteen more days, Naoms. Give me that?"

When Naomi nods shakily, face crumpling with relief, Emily kisses her so hard neither of them can breathe. They're crying while at it, but they don't stop, and they hold each other as the day fades into darkness and casts shadows across their grief.

Fourteen days later in Arizona's office, flanked by Emily and Gina, Naomi receives the verdict, and smiles.


End file.
